Books

THE ARTIST PORTRAIT PROJECT:  A Photographic Memoir of Portrait Sessions with San Diego Artists, 2006-2016

After five years’ absence from San Diego’s art community, Jennifer G. Spencer returned and began to photograph the artists she became acquainted with during her thirteen-year stint as an executive director of a visual arts organization—a project that became a ten-year journey. In The Artist Portrait Project, Spencer reveals the results of her adventure in portraiture after her retirement, and shares how this endeavor enlightened and shaped her opinion of these fifty artists and her art community. Engaging and visually stunning, The Artist Portrait Project is a book about self-discovery and the persistence of the creative spirit.

Published by SheWritesPress: 2018

“Dancing to Abstraction”

The body of work is about a group of contemporary dancers that I photographed over and eight-week period in their rehearsal studio in preparation for the production of “Cabaret Dances”, produced by Jean Isaacs San Diego Dance Theater.   I had begun photographing the dancers during their “Trolley Dances” in a conventional way.   As a painter, however, I wanted to photograph the dancers in a way that gives the feeling of painting.

Many thanks to the Jean Issacs Dancers for their time and patience with me being on the dance floor during their practice sessions for a performance. 

Botanical Portraits: Camera and Camera-less

Captured by Camera and Camera-less Processes

As an avid gardener, I have the daily opportunity throughout the year here in San Diego to tend to a garden of flowers and vegetables. My subjects for the portrait series have been most cooperative. I feed and water them…they pose for me.

Even though have a well outfitted darkroom studio, I still feel the need occasionally to get down and really handle my “subjects” using alternative photographic processes, such as “Lumen Printing”. It is not as tidy or neat a process as placing film in a film holder and exposing photographic paper or using digital capture, but very satisfying in a more primitive way. The lumen process requires the use of the sun’s UV rays to create imprints on black and white photographic paper.   This is called a “camera-less” process.

Sometimes my floral subjects are somewhat elusive, blooming only at night under a full moon. Photographing the Night Blooming Cereus in the dark is a challenge. No sun to show their delicate beauty. The need to use artificial lighting to capture their languid blooming process offers an opportunity to create some drama in their life cycle. The whole blooming process takes about one hour. By morning the blooms are limp and forlorn looking.

HANDMADE BOOKS

Bodyscapes:  Nude as Landscape

The book is a back-to-back, accordion style hand-made book. The 16 images were taken with a large format camera and were contact printed on Kodak AZO paper using the Amidol contact printing process.  The Amidol printing process has been used by photographers for over 100 years.  Unfortunately, Kodak AZO paper is no longer available.

The book was designed to be an “exhibition in a box.”  On the opposite side of each image is its negative.  Viewed in the round, the viewer can see both the positive and negative sides of the “exhibition”.   The positive/negative aspect is a metaphor for how the human body is sometimes viewed.

A selection of five images have been produced as individual Platinum/Palladium prints.

“How to Survive Project 2025“

Another exhibition in a box for the Central Library show “In the Land Off…” organized by F.I.G….Feminist Image Group. The exhibition addresses the current crisis of book bans across the country, as directed in the Administrations guide book…Project 2025. The group of women artists has responded by creating work that addresses this critical issue. The exhibition has been traveling across the City of San Diego’s library system this year and has gained notable press attention on the issue of book banning. Many thanks to the art director at the Main Library, Bonnie Domingos, for her guidance and support for this project of F.I.G.