Old Techniques; New Vision

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Williston Northampton’s Grum Project visiting artist series continued on campus the week of January 13-17, as we welcomed acclaimed photographer, author, and educator Jill Enfield to campus.

Enfield is renowned for her expertise in alternative photographic processes such as cyanotype and collodion. A photographer and hand-coloring artist, she has exhibited her work across the globe and has also authored three books. She also teaches at Parsons School of Design and New York University. Her commercial clients include household names like American Express, AT&T, Disney, LIFE Magazine, National Geographic, Nikon, and The New York Times Magazine and many others. Jill has appeared on major media platforms, including The Today Show Weekend Edition, New York One, and CBS Saturday Morning Edition. One of her favorite exhibits is the Glasshouse of New Americans, an installation that originally debuted on Ellis Island in New York City and is now on the road.

Enfield was invited to Williston by faculty member and photography teacher Edward Hing ’77, after Hing read one of her books. While Enfield typically teaches in higher education, she said the chance to come to Williston was an appealing one.

“I’m an adjunct professor at Parsons School of Design in New York City,” she said, “and then I teach workshops. I don’t reach out to people at high schools, but they find me, and then I go. Before this, I was an artist in residence in Bangkok for six weeks! That was really cool.”

The work Enfield produces is mesmerizing. Utilizing alternative techniques, Enfield takes what she sees through her camera lens, then amplifies it.

“I took classes in historical techniques and I just fell in love with them,” she said. “I never did like just plain color images, whether they were film or digital. I’m not big on the idea that what you see out of your camera is what you stop with. I always like to play around with the old techniques—it’s just more interesting to me.”

Her preference is for wet palate collodion, or images that are on glass. As the name indicates, the process involves keeping the plate wet from start to finish, and the end result is “three dimensional, very tactile,” according to Enfield. For a new exhibit she’s putting together, Enfield is using palladium finishing on her wet plates.

“It’s very tactile, sort of romantic when you’re looking at it,” Enfield said, “they look old, and the wet palate gives it a lot of texture and I like that much better than just a straight image.”

During her stay on campus, Enfield went over her techniques with our AP Studio class, one of the highest-level photography classes the school offers.

“I think it’s incredible that they have this kind of facility in a high school,” Enfield said, motioning to the computers set up and the black room around the photo lab. “[Photography] can be multidimensional, you know, so students can really go to all the different art areas and do something with it.”

On Thursday of the week she visited, Enfield held a lecture in the evening that was open to the entire school. Enfield went in depth about her two latest exhibits—the Glasshouse and her soon-to-be-released look at life along the Hudson River, drawn from images she has taken on her commute from upstate New York into New York City to teach.

When asked what she hopes to impart on students during her stay, Enfield kept it simple.

“Really just loosen up and have fun,” she said with a laugh. “We showed students [palladium printing], it’s an easy process that you don’t have to be scared to just get your hands dirty and wet and just have a good time with it. Then they will think about ‘how can I utilize that with how I’m seeing?’ and it just opens a whole new world to them. It’s not just on a screen.”

Learn more about Enfield at her work on her website. To read more about past Grum Project artists and the impact the program has on the school, visit our website.