Rosenthal, Ken

Ken Rosenthal, Tucson Arizona, USA

1993 School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL. MFA, Photography
1988 USC School of Cinema-Television, Los Angeles, CA. BA, Still Photography

A Dream Half Remembered

My latest series, A Dream Half Remembered, continues my exploration of personal and collective memories. Employing a formal quality consistent with my previous work, this series focuses on the shards of memory retained from the dream state, and the oftentimes-random structure and narrative of dreams. The series cuts between portraits of family and strangers, landscapes, animal imagery, and other familiar yet ambiguous scenes. The randomness that can be employed when sequencing and presenting this series will help evoke the shifting of people, place and narrative that occurs in a dream. The diffusion of focus strips away much specificity from the subject, allowing for a broader reading of the work.

Ken Rosenthal, Tucson, May 2005

Seen and not seen

Recently, while paging through albums of family photographs, I was struck by the realization that many of the pictures that were bringing back strong memories occurred before I was born, or at times or places I was not present. These memories were so vivid, yet were indeed false memories. Fascinated with how many of our recollections can be attributed to a photograph, dream or story as opposed to an actual experience, I began to cull imagery from archives of family photographs and personal work. Seen and Not Seen is a merging of the autobiographical and the universal. Most of the photographs in this series are intensely personal, yet many speak to a common experience. Interestingly, as this body of work has evolved, some images have become so resonant that the lines between experience and invention have blurred even more. Like life itself, this series is at once true and fictitious, remembered and reconstructed, seen and not seen.

Collections

George Eastman House International Museum of Photography & Film. Rochester, NY
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Houston, TX
The Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, IL
Smithsonian Institution National Portrait Gallery. Washington DC
National Portrait Gallery. London, England
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Boston, MA
Museum of Photographic Arts. San Diego, CA
The Wittliff Collections Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection. San Marcos,TX
Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Santa Barbara, CA
Portland Art Museum. Portland, OR
Worcester Art Museum. Worcester, MA
New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM
The Grace Museum, Abilene, TX
Center for Photography at Woodstock. Woodstock, NY
Center for Photographic Art. Carmel, CA
Photographic Center Northwest. Seattle, WA
Escuela Argentina de Fotografía. Buenos Aires, Argentina

Books

Ken Rosenthal: Photographs 2001-2009, 2011