Dora Somosi

CURRENT & UPCOMING

Recent Exhibitions:

From the Carrie Haddad Summer Show 2024: “Dora Somosi uses an array of photographic processes to produce images that obliterate preconceptions of what photography can be. From her arboreal cyanotypes to the “photo-collage nature-scapes” from her Fantastic Regular series, Somosi’s pictures unfailingly achieve an expansiveness typically reserved for painters. Somosi's "Fantastic Regular" series is an exploration of time where multiple views of one location merge into a single frame.  Light is refracted into color forms, and growth happens on a macro scale superimposed onto a lush, photo-collaged nature-scape.  This work translates a metamorphosis in nature that the human eye can perceive.  Through these landscape images, the artist explores the idea of a "beautiful change in nature, especially as it relates to the body and a generational life span."

Below images: Carrie Haddad Gallery, Summer Group Show, featuring cyanotype and abstracted landscape photography by Dora Somosi. Dora Somosi’s work as a fine art photographer is singular in its ability to document emotional dimension. For this exhibit, Somosi presents selections from She Was A Little Bit Blue where images of tree canopies are captured digitally and printed using the cyanotype process. Somosi likens this distinctive color to all that it conjures; “the blue of moodiness, the blue of reverie, the blue of midnight, the blue of remembering, the blue of singing the blues, the blue of veins…In this limited color space, I see the temperature of what makes us alive and connects us.” Images are printed on a cold press watercolor paper and available in limited editions.

Below left: Klompching Gallery presents Land Revisited, an exhibition of artworks, utilizing the landscape as a thematic link. We witness the landscape in the photograph, not as a straight forward re-presentation, but rather as a site of intervention, conceptually and physically. For Dora Somosi, the pandemic ushered in a need to reflect the world back in a new way. She utilizes the 19th Century cyanotype process to good effect. In her renderings of tree canopies, she likens the blue tones and color space to all that it conjures. The labor-intensive process acts as a metaphor for the slowing-down of society during a time ravaged by illness and vulnerability. These stunning, monochromatic photographs enable the viewer to escape, to imagine, to contemplate.

Above right: Klompching Gallery exhibition, Paperworks featuring new artworks by Dora Somosi. For the artist, the paper upon which she prints her photographs, is not a mere substrate, but a core element of her project. For the project, By Her Side, Dora Somosi has been visiting the homes/studios of influential historical female artists and thinkers. She creates a photographic blueprint, of a tree that was witness—through its proximity—to the chosen women’s legacy. The selected women all have deep relationships to nature and the landscape. They use their expertise or pioneering spirit for education and/or environmental appreciation. Visiting the sites where these women lived and worked stemmed from hikes with the artist’s daughter.  It is a performative act that calls upon instinctive photographing to both connect and memorialize.