The natural world has provided Deborah with a particular way of seeing. Her work combines nature, science, photography and digital processes to create a language that is uniquely her own, where the interaction of plants, the patterns and growth in community, is a form of knowledge.
As human beings, we may lose touch with nature, but our senses are built for this environment. Deborah’s ongoing work explores that unconscious collaboration between the natural world and the human mind. Choices of perception, unconscious parsing of the visual field, and cognition inform her practice.
Deborah’s work examines an array of questions. How do our minds build meaning through symbols and written language? What if there exist whole sets of language waiting for discovery? Where does one thing end and the next begin? What does the observation of just one set of colors show us about the underlying complexity in living communities? What happens when the sensation of strong sunlight hits the ever-changing array of the natural world and then our eye? How does our ability to see just one choice among thousands become available to us? Where are we at any moment in the dance of filtering perception and meaning?
To these ends Deborah decodes the imagery in photographs taken, often using the digital darkroom as an alternative process with its own brush strokes. A variety of techniques are used – color extraction, color planes, silhouetting, digital collage, overlaying and recombination - all in the service of a reinterpretation of the nominally seen and felt. Her work abstracts an essence: as a form of calligraphy, of slow-motion dance, of communal interaction, of intense meaning.
Deborah is inspired by a childhood lived in nature and books, of trips through the natural world of the Hudson River School, informed by Eliot Porter and Japanese wood block prints, of Klee and Miro, Frankenthaler and Motherwell. Hilla and Bernd Becher, Uta Barth, and John Baldessari are more recent influences.
Bio
Deborah Kaplan uses photography to abstract the landscape. She extracts and recombines photographic elements using primarily digital techniques. Deborah’s work reveals a unique lexicon of the natural world, informed by science, aesthetics, and choices of perception.
She has studied at the DeCordova Museum, the Art Institute of Boston, and Maine Media Workshops. Deborah’s experiences, which influence her current photographic practice, include a BA in biology, a career as a software engineer, and as an award winning fiber artist.
Deborah’s work has been featured on Lenscratch. Her work has been shown at the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Photographic Resource Center, the Rhode Island Center of Photographic Arts, the A Smith Gallery, and ArtsWorcester, and as well online at the New York Center for Photographic Arts and Loosenart.
Deborah, originally from Beacon, NY, resides and works in Bolton, Massachusetts.
CURRENT & UPCOMING
Group Exhibition
Color Theory | Griffin Museum of Photography at Lafayette City | March 18 – June 13
Beyond Words | Fountain St. Gallery, Boston | Feb 16 – March 27
CV
Group Exhibitions
2022
Color Theory | Griffin Museum of Photography at Lafayette City
Beyond Words | Fountain St. Gallery, Boston
2021
Digits: A Parallel Universe | Griffin Museum of Photography at Lafayette City
diptych | A Smith Gallery
black/white | A Smith Gallery
Abstract | NYC4PA | (online)
Field of Vision | Photographic Resource Center, Cambridgeside
RI Center for Photographic Arts | A New Leaf
Language | LoosenArt | May (online)
The Nineteenth ArtsWorcester Biennial | ArtsWorcester
unbound | A Smith Gallery
Atelier 34 | Griffin Museum of Photography
Your Work Here | Photographic Resource Center (online)
RI Center for Photographic Arts | Futures and Favorites
Winter Solstice Members Exhibition 2021 | Griffin Museum of Photography
2020
The Eighth Annual One | ArtsWorcester
Your Work Here | Photographic Resource Center (online)
Pushing the Limits | A Virtual Shaft Weaving Art Exhibition (online)
Winter Solstice Members Exhibition 2020 | Griffin Museum of Photography
Publications
2022
What Will You Remember, LACP Highlights - Part 2,
by Elin Spring and Suzanne Révy, 2021
2021
Lens/cratch, Conversations with Nature: Deborah Kaplan, by Aline Smithson, 2021
What Will You Remember, Digits: A Parallel Universe, by Elin Spring, 2021
Singular Images, LACP Portfolio Review - a Portfolio exhibition, by Douglas Stockdale, 2021
What Will You Remember, LACP 2021 Exposure Weekend Portfolio Reviews,
by Elin Spring and Suzanne Révy, 2021
In Conversation
2022
OpenShow Pasadena | “This is a Photograph Because I Say It Is”
2021
Photographic Resource Center | Field of Vision Opening Reception
Griffin Museum of Photography | Digits: A Parallel Universe