Catherine Slye —Night Water

This series is called Night Water; nocturnal long-exposure photographs of the canals in Phoenix and surrounding communities. There are over 100 miles of canals owned by the federal government and managed by the Salt River Valley Water Users' Association. The water is used for irrigation and the canal trails and paths are predominantly used for recreation. To date, I’ve explored and photographed portions of five of the nine canal systems.

With my photography I strive to reveal the beauty in the universality, even mundanity of our human built structures that confine our modern lives to elevate disregarded settings and experiences, allowing grace and, dare I say, grandeur to escape. Expanding the liminal spaces and experiences with minimally processed photographs so as to invite an elastic sense of knowing has always been exciting and challenging. Undertaking definitive series supports my immersion in totality - physically and emotionally, unearthing nuanced divergences and parallelisms. My digital photographs are produced as Digital C prints because as digital photographs are captured in RGB, only a digital chromogenic print which is produced in RGB can maintain the integrity and intent of the images.

bio

Catherine Slye moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 2007, since then the city itself has been the central focus of her art. Here in the urban desert where the physical environment is acute she finds the extremeness of the geography to be an especially apt backdrop to her photography. The color seen after sunset is sultry, saturated and palatable. A time when color feels tangible. Catherine is excited by the possibility of photographing the less seen/the unseen; spaces, environments and situations that can be called “disregarded settings.” Her photographs are purely digital, blending the immediacy digital offers with the ability to capture manually.

For more information, please contact Catherine Slye at: catslye@gmail.com or visit: www.catslye.com
Interview with Catherine Slye here