Jenn Libby is an artist based in Rochester, NY. In 2004, while in graduate school at the Visual Studies Workshop, she began studying the wet-plate collodion process with Heather F. Wetzel. She continues to use the wet-plate process for much of her creative output. Libby explores themes of collecting, recording, and memory via photographs, photograms, books, films, and installations. Her interest in analog recording technologies of the 19th and 20th centuries shapes and informs her work.
Selene, 2014 from Seeing is Forgetting series
My installations generally incorporate several bodies of work and they often overlap. The 30 x 30” prints in Seeing is Forgetting were exhibited as part of my Record exhibition as well as my most recent exhibit - Echoes from the Ether.
Just like Icarus ignored the warnings of Daedelus, humans ignored the warnings of scientists. For over fifty years scientific evidence has been indicating that human activities were affecting the climate on planet earth and would have devastating results if not curtailed. The only home of humankind and innumerable other incredible life forms will likely become uninhabitable in a relatively short period of time because we ignored the warnings.
Echoes from the Ether is about witnessing this situation, and the emotions that result from this awareness—sadness, despair, anger, hopelessness, guilt, grief, confusion, and disbelief. I am not prepared to face the possibility of mass extinction. This is not an easy topic to talk about. No one wants to think about these things.
Echoes from the Ether continues my exploration of 19th and 20th century recording and communication devices through the images, the records, and the photographic process. It consists of two interrelated parts.
The End of the Record is a letter to Mother Earth composed with 45 rpm records and ambrotypes. The titles and images reflect my wonder of the natural world, and of human ingenuity and art. The audio installation by Joe Tunis is a composite of the run-out grooves from these 45s.
Seeing is Forgetting is a set of camera-less images that record the shadows of translucent man-made objects using the wet-plate collodion process. As the analysis of the climate revealed climate change, the images reveal aspects of the objects not normally seen. These images act as a counterpoint to The End of the Record, inviting one to meditate on the present moment.
In 1977, at the peak of the environmental movement and the height of the popularity of records, NASA launched two Voyager spacecraft, each carrying a Golden Record containing voices and images of the people of Earth. These two records may be the last evidence of humans. How long will our voices echo through the ether? Will anyone hear us?
Seeing is Forgetting is the evolution of the photograms created for Record. Photograms of round glass and plastic objects became abstractions, no longer associated with the object used to make them. To further distance the image from the object, select plates were scanned and digitally output as 30” x 30” prints.
Record is a series of wet-plate collodion photograms of everyday objects. Each tintype is mounted in a large format film developing hanger ranging in size from 3-1/4” x 4-1/4” to 8” x 10” and the images are juxtaposed and displayed en masse in a larger installation. Inspired by early Wunderkammer, the objects include naturally occurring items such as shells and bones, as well as manufactured objects like toys and tools.
I am a scientist and filmmaker, a collector and cataloger, an archaeologist and archivist, and a photographer and ethnographer, focused on the investigation of the matter of memory. Through various methodologies my inquiries incorporate personal experience in the hope of tapping a larger memory collective.
Hand-processed film, found objects, collodion images, and digital technologies are employed in a transformative act likened to the process of memory. I take bits and pieces and abstract them into images or transform them into new objects. The result is ultimately different from the originating materials but, like memory, it is reassigned a new reality. With this work, I am taking something intangible, such as a memory, and turning it into something concrete. Via this memory theatre, my creations either serve to trigger memories or stand in for them.
The Cluttered House is about the inordinate amount of clutter that surrounds us and is consumed both consciously and unconsciously. As it accumulates, we try to organize it to maintain sanity and to make sense of it.
This installation is an embodiment of a variety of related impulses- filing, cataloguing, and archiving- that are nurtured through a desire to recollect. We are a culture concerned with “self-archivization” on an individual basis as well as a collective one. I align my specific interest in the archaeology of 19th and 20th century media with the archaeology of the self. Memories, words, images, and objects are overlapping fragments that create, preserve, transform, and destroy one another. It is my hope that this artistic version of bric-a-brac, these fragments of life, can ultimately induce the viewer to sense an underlying wholeness.
Diary 1948, Home Songs for Little Darlings, and Cigar Box were all part of The Cluttered House, my MFA thesis installation at the Visual Studies Workshop in 2005. They are reconfigurations of objects I found in an abandoned house in Ann Arbor in the late 1980s.
Diary 1948, 2004, Edition of 1
Based on a young woman’s diary.
Cigar Box, 2005, Edition of 1
A cigar box becomes the repository of objects embedded in wax.
Home Songs for Little Darlings, 2005, Edition of 1
An old book of poetry for children is the basis for a kinetic book or mobile.
My Scrapbook, 2005, Edition of 1
I used an empty vintage wooden scrapbook to create My Scrapbook using found photos from a German flea market.
Self-portrait, 2004, Edition of 1
When holding the book, one can see oneself through it or reflected in it. One also sees the world through it.
Miss Lonely Heart, 2004, Edition of 1
Old dating pamphlets, the precursor to online dating sites, are reconfigured to create Miss Lonely Heart. I scanned, printed, cut, and waxed select pages and wove them into a wire dress form.
In the pamphlets, each woman submitted a photograph of herself and a brief bio. Bios included a list of physical attributes such as eye color, height, weight, and physical measurements, along with activities she enjoyed and her talents in the housekeeping realm.
The pamphlets feature pages full of snapshots accompanied by an identification number and age of the woman. Women were selected first on their looks and age. Then the identification number could be used to look up their bios in a separate section.
Wasteland, 2003, Edition of 1
Wasteland depicts a long-vacant plaza in a suburb of Rochester, NY. It critiques the land waste of suburban sprawl and a country designed around automobiles.
Checked Out, 2002, Three-volume set, edition of 1
Checked Out is a three-volume set of handmade artist’s books addressing the theme of death and corporeality. All elements reinforce this theme. The bindings, selected from a Keith Smith book, stylistically represent this mortal coil. Elements of the fictitious Underwood Public Library also reference death.
The Borrowers are artists in various fields. The information under Due Date is the date of death of the borrower, indicating when they had to return their body. The Room Number is the age of the borrower at the time of their death.
After the Countess of Castiglione
Installation views of Echoes from the Ether at Mercer Gallery at Monroe Community College, 2022
Main Street Arts blog post in conjunction with the exhibit, Alternative Photographic Process, 2017
Interview in conjunction with solo exhibit, Record, at Kuhn Fine Art Gallery at Ohio State University, 2014