Outdoor World
Drawing upon her background in biological science, Carol Selter makes photo-based work that explores the natural world and our relationships to that environment. In Outdoor World, she constructs slightly altered versions of reality by photographing pages from Blurb photo books she made for an earlier project.
While keeping the books intact, Selter manipulates the pages to create new, composite landscapes that are not exactly fictional yet not fully representational. They occupy the liminal space between documented and staged, original and appropriated, between “taking” and “making.” Rich with blur, focus revealing only halftone dots, the images are approximate rather than detailed, generic rather than specific.
By making superficially ordinary yet ambiguous images that deviate from traditional landscape photographs, Selter seeks to extend our idea of what a such a photograph can be, while commenting on a future where pre-existing images may be all that’s available to those who seek natural landscapes.
Carol Selter (b. Los Angeles) lives and works in Santa Cruz, CA. She received her MFA in Photography from the School of Art and Design, San Jose State University in 2002. She also holds degrees in botany and biology. Her work has been exhibited at Gallery 16, San Francisco, SF Camerawork, SFMOMA, SFAC, and the San Jose Museum of Art, as well as at Harvard University, The McKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas, TX, and CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, NY. She has received a SECA award and the Phelan Art Award in Photography. She is represented by Gallery 16 in San Francisco.
Installation
