Melanie Ezra’s evolution from mathematician to photographer to artist follows a creative trajectory. Deciding to change careers in mid-life, Melanie left her relatively safe maths teaching post to undertake a BA in photography. Here she demonstrated a maverick approach to archaic photographic forms such as pinhole photography and challenged the medium with a conceptual approach to subject matter.
But where does a photographer go to make a mark and find a market in these days of cheap digital cameras when everyone is a photographer? Diversification; conceptualisation, artistic creativity have all helped Melanie Ezra to expand out of the constraints of the photographer and into the realm of the artist. Using photographs as her source material and then deconstructing them in a frenzy of cutting and pasting, she invokes 19th century decoupage, the 20th century pioneers of photomontage and collage and latterly, wandering into the realms of printmaking and mixed media to produce a totally 21st century response,
“I've never wanted to do long runs of anything. My artwork has always been about craft rather than mass production. It's the reason why I steered away from conventional photography and moved into collage. Before that, I focused on traditional chemical photography and pinhole images rather than digital imagery.”
Ezra’s pragmatic commitment to her artistic practice means that she diligently produces thematic suites of work. Influenced by her background in mathematics and physics, she works through a process of stretching time beyond a single moment and into something much longer. Her most recent series, Chronology, studies the imprints of past galaxies and their impact on our present, taking the split second imagery of a photograph and combining and superimposing a collaged image of a galaxy onto and into it, stretching time from the near present to the vast past in one single image.
Her work involves the physical deconstruction of the materials she works with; photographs, drawings, printmaking are all dis- and re- assembled according to her vision. A vision that,
“….involves examination of the different perceptions we give ourselves in visually recording and experiencing time. I know it involves the visual superimposition and possible juxtaposition of relatively recent history with that from eons ago.”
A prolific blogger, Melanie Ezra’s creative blog tells it like it is; discussing ideas, impressions, inspirations alongside more prosaic subjects such as meeting deadlines, marketing and the interminable paperwork faced by anyone in self-employment. She gives a valuable insight into the real world of the artist, the one where things go wrong, get mucky and frustrating as well as the highs of that first flash of inspiration and the satisfaction of coming to the end of a successful suite of images.
Since graduating in 2010, her prolific artistic output and focussed work ethic have resulted in many solo and group shows in Wales, the UK and internationally, a testament to her talent and her commitment to pushing the medium of photography beyond its current mass-produced digital genre.
Rose Davies. September 2013
But where does a photographer go to make a mark and find a market in these days of cheap digital cameras when everyone is a photographer? Diversification; conceptualisation, artistic creativity have all helped Melanie Ezra to expand out of the constraints of the photographer and into the realm of the artist. Using photographs as her source material and then deconstructing them in a frenzy of cutting and pasting, she invokes 19th century decoupage, the 20th century pioneers of photomontage and collage and latterly, wandering into the realms of printmaking and mixed media to produce a totally 21st century response,
“I've never wanted to do long runs of anything. My artwork has always been about craft rather than mass production. It's the reason why I steered away from conventional photography and moved into collage. Before that, I focused on traditional chemical photography and pinhole images rather than digital imagery.”
Ezra’s pragmatic commitment to her artistic practice means that she diligently produces thematic suites of work. Influenced by her background in mathematics and physics, she works through a process of stretching time beyond a single moment and into something much longer. Her most recent series, Chronology, studies the imprints of past galaxies and their impact on our present, taking the split second imagery of a photograph and combining and superimposing a collaged image of a galaxy onto and into it, stretching time from the near present to the vast past in one single image.
Her work involves the physical deconstruction of the materials she works with; photographs, drawings, printmaking are all dis- and re- assembled according to her vision. A vision that,
“….involves examination of the different perceptions we give ourselves in visually recording and experiencing time. I know it involves the visual superimposition and possible juxtaposition of relatively recent history with that from eons ago.”
A prolific blogger, Melanie Ezra’s creative blog tells it like it is; discussing ideas, impressions, inspirations alongside more prosaic subjects such as meeting deadlines, marketing and the interminable paperwork faced by anyone in self-employment. She gives a valuable insight into the real world of the artist, the one where things go wrong, get mucky and frustrating as well as the highs of that first flash of inspiration and the satisfaction of coming to the end of a successful suite of images.
Since graduating in 2010, her prolific artistic output and focussed work ethic have resulted in many solo and group shows in Wales, the UK and internationally, a testament to her talent and her commitment to pushing the medium of photography beyond its current mass-produced digital genre.
Rose Davies. September 2013
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