Biography:

Jennifer Bisbing's fine art is usually spatially ambiguous and minimalist; her artistic intention is to celebrate non-conformity and show viewers a hidden significance within an ordinary day. To Bisbing, her camera is like a mirror that she holds up to society so it can see itself. By drawing on her education, Bisbing is dedicated to creating images that expose feminist issues, cross cultural barriers, and reflect humanistic concerns. She is also a vegetarian with a fondness for the smell of bacon.

Bisbing's focus has recently shifted into more editorial work that highlights raw issues while documenting American differences in isolated communities. One of Bisbing's documentary projects, "12 Scheduled Stops" involved the facelessness of daily commuting on Chicago's Metra trains. Her personal project, "Emerge Changed" intended to depict the subculture of alley dwellers and ended up portraying how the dichotomy that drew her into the alley existed within her. In 2003, Bisbing shot “Lost in the Backyard” while traveling through the backcountry of Arkansas. She is currently shooting a street photography series, “1/15 of a Second” in Chicago, New York and London.

Bisbing earned a BA in Humanitiesfrom San Francisco State University and has been photographing for over fifteen years. Bisbing travels throughout the United States, Europe and Africa to capture her images. Bisbing regularly has work featured in retail stores, galleries, executive offices, alternative spaces, web galleries and national publications.

Artist Statement:

1/15 of a Second

This project involves looking for certain visual arrangements to express what I perceive as city dwellers wandering like zombies. I photograph city landscapes and capture strangers drifting through the space seemingly not noticing each other or the architecture surrounding them. I deliberately photograph people out of focus just enough to make you feel like you have seen them before while reinforcing the point that we rarely pay attention to individuals walking by.

The flow of the blurry figures visually expresses the muffled sounds of the urban environment and suggests the feeling of people swimming past one another. I played with the space between each figure to exaggerate the interaction of what I observe as pedestrians playing hopscotch along the gridded sidewalk trying to sustain anonymity within the city machine.

This series is a work in progress currently including 28 images. I intend to nearly double that number to surround the viewer with a room full of strangers. These scenes are from New York and Chicago but the completed series will include San Francisco and Toronto to reinforce the universals present in urban pedestrian behavior.

Jennifer Bisbing

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