Scanner Photography -- Ellen Hoverkamp

Thank you Linda (Linda Kane Brinckerhoff) for passing this along! Bill Barnett just did a workshop on this for New Haven Camera Club!

Scanner Photography -- Ellen Hoverkamp

This exhibit will run from February 17, 2010 through March 31, 2010. For more information you can contact Ellen Hoverkamp through her website or at 203-933-4752 or by email.

The following is an article from the Boston Globe.

Ellen Hoverkamp starts her artistic process by raiding her neighbor s' gardens. After they have toiled and tilled, the Connecticut artist simply plucks away the best blooms of the season.
She has permission. Her victims know that in return she will provide copies of the fascinating works she creates with her floral plunder. The rest of us can view them at her solo show at Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston, titled ``Visions from My Neighbors' Gardens."
Hoverkamp creates what is known as scanner photography. Rather than using a scanner to gather images that are later manipulated, she painstakingly arranges flowers on her scanner and essentially photographs them using the scanner glass as her lens. Only minor retouching similar to that in traditional photography is done.

The result takes floral arranging into the 21st century. It also bends the boundaries between 2-D and 3-D art. Like the Victorian botanical drawings that inspire her, she arranges the blossoms and stems in a way that showcases them on a flat page.

But she also builds a frame on the scanner and then uses it to wire and layer each blossom into 3-D space. The effect of taking both dimensions into account creates images that seem to be beautifully pressed flowers that are not pressed.

Others form what she calls ``impossible bouquets," explosions of blossoms that all face the lens and lead into one stem. Gardeners and art appreciators alike will all find something to marvel at here. And all are printed with archival inks that will last about 70 years.

Meanwhile, Hoverkamp is branching out into other perishables. Vegetables, eggs, even a pair of live crabs (that she liberated afterward to the beach) have graced her scanner screen.

`I've done some various kooky things," she said. ``I broke one scanner by using snow. I was trying to photograph roses in the snow. And then there were the lobster tails. I photographed a couple of them in an embrace. It was a pretty sexy shot."

And you thought your scanner was just for family photographs.