Statement / Songs Without Words
     
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The music in the images is a celebration of the musical life of my mother, Dorothy Alpert, a professional violinist. I have, quite literally, taken the music that she played for much of her career and photocopied it. The photocopies are then combined, manipulated, and collaged with other images drawn from disparate sources: my photographs, prints from the recent past, and appropriated images. It is unimportant what they are in reality—they take on a new life and meaning when juxtaposed together and with the music.

Many of the current prints are done on "solar plates." A solar plate is a steel-backed photosensitive polymer plate. Once I resolve the image, it is transferred to a transparency and placed on the plate. This is then exposed in a light box (it can also be done in the sun) for a certain length of time, depending on the sensitivity and subtleties of the image, which etches the image into the plate. I then print it as an intaglio print or a monoprint. This process allows me to simultaneously experience both the mechanical processes and the immediacy and physicality of working directly with my materials.

 

The books are a natural outgrowth of my prints. Because of the importance of time in music, many of the prints have evolved into a sculptural form reflecting the sequence of "sound" in the source music.


Sacred Sounds