Artist Birthday: Paula Chamlee

Paula Chamlee is renowned for her series on a variety of different subjects from landscapes to factory interiors. Her series definitely rely on the repetition of simple forms that render her natural observations monumental. She wants people to sense movement in her works, both visual and emotional.

Artist Birthday for 12 December: Paula Chamlee (born 1944 US)

Paula Chamlee, Leaf Quartet, Ottsville, PA, 1997, gelatin silver chloride print on paper, 19.2 x 24.1 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, © 2025 Paul Chamlee (PMA-4149B)

Paula Chamlee has published numerous books of her photographs of landscapes accompanied by essays about nature. Her first book, Natural Connections was published in 1994 and established her reputation as an important photographer of landscape in a classical straight photography tradition. She has also published books on cityscapes (Chicago and San Francisco), and on landscapes in foreign lands (Tuscany, for example). In all of her landscape series, she produces both grand view and close-ups of landscapes that present intriguing abstract/realist combinations.

Chamlee began her college career in the 1960s studying for a performing arts degree. She changed to visual arts to complete her BFA in 1988, focused on painting. However, during that period she also became fascinated with photography. The medium immediately appealed to her because of her love of landscape and nature, and the accessibility outdoors that the camera affords the artist.

Leaf Quartet is typical of series that the artist photographs, where the views grow increasingly close-up from an overall view. While the black-and-white photographs are reminiscent of grand masters of landscape photography such as Ansel Adams (1902-1984), they represent contemporary nature in a more intimate way. They are definitely timeless records of her travels produced in a traditional format.

Background

The early 2000s witnessed an increase in personal photography. This has precedents in the snapshot style of photography of such artists as Nan Goldin (born 1953) and Wolfgang Tillmans (born 1968) introduced in the 1990s. The work of many contemporary amateur photographers -- using digital cameras, cell phone cameras and photo-blogs -- has developed a body of contemporary photography that is also related to the odd angles and coincidences of straight street photography of the 1960s and 1970s.

Much of the photography of the early 2000s has been self-referential, characterized particularly in the explosion of selfies. These diaristic tendencies in photography reveal an uncomplicated and straightforward view of reality, no matter what the subject. Diaristic photography is displayed with indications of subjective feelings by the photographer of implied or indefinite narratives, although a single interpretation is not insisted upon by the artist. Rather than offering elusive states of mind, diaristic photography invites the viewer to engage in photographs and construct their own independent narrative.

Correlation to Davis program: Focus on Photography 2E, Chapter 10, Landscape