Extracting Humans from the Landscape with Dale Rio
Extracting Humans from the Landscape with Dale Rio
May 9th - June 13th, 2024
Meets every Thursday from 6 pm - 8 pm EDT via Zoom for 6 weeks.
Human activity has impacted every corner of the globe, including remote areas where human beings aren’t physically present. Places – waterways, forests, deserts, etc. – have been mapped and assigned names, throughout history mythology has conveyed stories of the natural world, and pollution travels on the air and seas. Is it possible for contemporary photographers to tell visual stories about the natural world without referencing humanity; human history, activities, folklore, industry?
In this six-week practice group, we’ll explore ways to extract human beings from the landscape and create projects that tell stories of place independent of human impact. And we will debate whether this is even possible.
Kinship uses a pay-what-you-can honor system with a minimum donation or $50. The average contribution for a six-week practice group is $125. Please give as generously as you can. If you cannot afford the minimum contribution of $50 please don't hesitate to request a scholarship.
Dale Rio is a photographic artist whose work explores issues such as mortality, human constructs, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Utilizing film and historic photographic processes, Dale employs “straight” photography to document the world around her and also creates conceptual work in response to that world. Her photographs have been shown extensively in the U.S., as well as in England, Germany, and New Zealand. They reside in private collections and have been reproduced in countless publications. She has authored one book and co-authored a second.
Dale received a BA in Studio Art from Smith College in 1993 and an MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute in 1996. In 1997, she was awarded a Fulbright Travel Grant and the Miguel Vinciguerra Grant to document life in rural Sicily. Upon her return to the States, Dale embarked upon a varied photographic career that has included freelancing, serving as a master darkroom printer, teaching, curating, and editing.
In 2018, Dale was the recipient of a Windgate Scholarship, which allowed her to study the Daguerreotype process at Penland School of Craft. She has attended residencies at Penland, the Studios at MASS MoCA, the Farmington Valley Arts Center (Connecticut), and Ars BioArctica at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in Finland.
Dale has been involved with numerous photo and art centers across the country, and in 2015, she co-founded The Halide Project, a Philadelphia-based non-profit whose mission is the support of alternative and historic process photography. In 2021, she launched Point A to Point B: analog explorations, a print publication that features travel- and place-based alternative process photographic work, and in 2022 she founded Lux et Libera: women at the intersection of light and chemistry, an initiative that seeks to recognize the leading role women play in alternative process photography and create new opportunities for them.
