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March 27, 2021 — April 24, 2021
Bird Market — Ellen Friedlander
"Expanded Frame" is a dual photography exhibition showcasing the innovative works of Ellen Friedlander and Jodie Hulden. Both artists push the boundaries of traditional photography by employing unique editing techniques to create expansive, wide-view images that capture the richness and complexity of their subjects. This exhibition is notable for its ability to transform ordinary scenes into detailed narratives that engage and captivate viewers.
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Ellen Friedlander is a Los Angeles–based fine art and documentary artist who uses a variety of in-camera and post-processing techniques to reveal the unpredictable, idiosyncratic, inscrutable nature of the human condition. Her work has been most influenced by 20th-century street photographers. Their iconic photographs inspired her from the age of 16 to take to the city streets across the United States and Hong Kong, where she has lived. She holds a BFA in Art with a minor in photography from Ithaca College and an MA in Mass Communications with an emphasis in advertising from the University of Florida, Gainesville. After many years of working in all facets of the business of photography—assisting, styling, representing, and working on her own photographic assignments—she has found her own way of expressing the street with the Extended Frame.
After moving to LA in 2018, she joined the Los Angeles Center of Photography and Pasadena Photography Arts (PPA). In 2019, PPA added Friedlander to their advisory board to help further broaden their reach as a place for photographic artists living on the Eastside of Los Angeles to find community and share their work in Open Show and Forum.
Friedlander has exhibited her work internationally, including the United Jewish Congregation in Hong Kong, Saint Xavier University in Chicago, and various galleries in Los Angeles and Kraków, Poland. She has been featured in Lenscratch, The Hand Magazine, and as guest artist on The Candid Frame podcast, Episode #499. Her work was included in the Winter 2019 Focus PhotoLA Top 20, and most recently Hiding IV was the cover photograph for the APA-LA Off the Clock Curated Personal Photography Exhibition 2020. Friedlander spent fifteen years in Hong Kong raising her two children before moving to California. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
In the often chaotic and overwhelming pace of life, I use my camera to create a visual diary of the places and experiences that have been imprinted on my psyche. In Extended Frame™, I look for singular moments that can be combined to convey the complexity of everyday life. These individual photographs—and the subjects within them—are placed in conversation with each other to explore dichotomies of public vs. private, unity vs. isolation, the collective vs. the individual.
The resulting scenes transport the viewer to new, imagined environments even as visual inconsistencies disrupt the illusion where two frames meet. Simultaneously both distinct and interlinked, these images reveal unexpected connections, challenging our idea of what is real and reflecting on the unpredictable, idiosyncratic, and inscrutable nature of the human experience.
Images taken since the outbreak of the coronavirus reflect the pandemic's stark impact on my city of Los Angeles as our community grapples with the implications of being alone together.
Jodie Hulden is a fine art, contemplative photographer whose work focuses on the poetry of intimate spaces, both wild and man-made. Her photography has been strongly influenced by Taoism, Chan and Zen Buddhism, ancient Chinese landscape paintings, classical Chinese poetry, and Japanese haiku. She discovered her passion for black-and-white photography in the 1970s, influenced by Ansel Adams, Minor White, and Walker Evans. She has mentored with George DeWolfe and studied with Carlan Tapp, Michael Frye, Brett Erickson, and Susan Burnstine. Jodie lives in San Diego.
This work is a celebration of silence. When I am in nature, it usually takes a while—it can be hours or days sometimes—for the crazy whirl of thoughts to quiet themselves. When I become aware that the buzz of thoughts has fallen away, what remains is a spacious, quiet, and easy joy. It is a joy with no words; it just is.
What also becomes obvious to me is the all-inclusiveness of being out in nature. As photographers, we often dwell on the visual tableaus before us, but it is so much more than an experience of the eyes alone. Our whole body is immersed in a 360-degree encounter that includes the air, the wind, the smell, textures, the vagaries of temperature, light and shadow, and sounds, however delicate or intense. We are absorbed then, and our thoughts recede or disappear entirely. We are left with spacious silence.
Afterwards, questions arise. What is the source of this silence? Does it come from inside myself, or is it intrinsic to the wilderness I find myself in? It seems that I wouldn't notice the silence around me if I wasn't silent within myself. Is it then that the subject and object become one, the boundary between the two just a permeable transparency? Because sometimes the boundary disappears.
There are, of course, no answers to these questions. I have to remain content with the questions themselves and hold them close, like a Zen koan. Often my response is to write a short poem that evokes the experience of being immersed in such places as these.
In this series, I chose to combine the visual encounter from an expanded view along with the poetic response in an intimate and hopeful conversation inviting others to recognize and honor the joy of Seeing Silence.
