West Coast based famed photographer Tierney Gearon creates deeply personal and autobiographical photographs of her family and is best known for her highly acclaimed and publicized work in I am a Camera, shown at London’s Saatchi gallery in 2001. In 2006, her second major body of work, The Mother Project became the subject of a documentary film and book for this exhibition, Daddy, where are you? was published later that year. Gearon's newest work titled EXPLOSURE, is a continuation of her personal investigation of home and family. Instead of taking single shots Gearon photographs surprising, chance-narratives using the technique of double exposure in camera. By superimposing two unrelated images into one, Gearon composes narratives that are surreal and engaging yet fleeting and ephemeral.    

 

This body of work I have been working on for the past 2 years. I started double exposing the images originally so I wouldn’t have to strip down in front of some stranger. At the time I was working on these nude portraits of myself. But then double exposing the images led to something else!!! Something way more fascinating! Not only did I not have to be in the image I didn’t have to get naked...The images were paintings I was doing inside the camera. And by double exposing them inside the camera this allowed the magic of an accident to happen!!! There is no retouching or after work. Everything is done in the camera! Also all my work is related to what is going on in my life! I blur life with art. I love chaos! So now instead of creating something spontaneous outside of the camera I was doing it inside the camera. And as I untangled the mess in my life I would untangle the images inside the camera!! Creating these amazing dream like images I call EXPLOSURE!