My photographs can be thought of as unfinished narratives, offering glimpses of scenes that form part of a larger story. They depict places we might visit in dreams or the imagination, where ordinary boundaries are blurred. The images can serve as gateways into spaces that may (or may not) exist in the past, present or future…or perhaps all at the same time. Like half-remembered dreams, they may conjure a response mingling familiarity and unease. The 19th century photographic processes (and sometimes photographs and artifacts from the period) that I have used resonate with the pictures themselves, allowing the images to exist outside of a definite moment in time and space.
BIOGRAPHY
Chris Losee began making black-and-white prints in the fallout shelter of his parents’ home in the Westchester, NY suburbs. He pursued academics in college but was drawn back to image making, earning an MFA in photography from Rochester Institute of Technology, where he studied with Bea Nettles and Charles A. Arnold.
He worked as a photographer and art director in New York City, but paused image-making when digital technology became ascendant. In 1996, he moved to upstate New York and started a sustainable farming enterprise and a family. But once, again the call of analog photography drew him back.
Reconnecting with artists creating handmade images led him to work with people like Mark Osterman and Brenton Hamilton, who guided him in salted-paper, cyanotype and gum dichromate printing. These processes have become an essential part of his photographic practice.
Chris Losee’s artwork has been featured in several publications, including Direct Art and The Hand magazines. A few of his recent shows include a solo exhibition, The Absent Hours, at Locust Grove Estate (Poughkeepsie, NY), and the group shows Alternative Processes 2024 (New York City), Made in New York (Auburn, NY), The Still(ed) Life (Silver City, NM), By Hand: Alternative Processes (Abilene,TX), Portals and Passages (Bethlehem, PA), and Contemporary Photography (Providence, RI).