Suspended Realities - Fran Forman

On Friday 28th March Fran Foreman presented a talk from her home in New York to members of the Bangor club and others who had joined online .

Fran is no stranger to Northern Ireland and visited Bangor some ten years ago to present a workshop.

Her work is displayed in many galleries and museums throughout the world including The museum of Fine Arts Boston,The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Washington,DC ,The Museum of Fine Arts Houston and The North Down Museum amongst many more.

To begin Fran spoke of her childhood interest in drawing often copying photographs from magazines .

She studied art and sociology at Brandeis University ,receiving an MSW in psychiatric social work and an MFA from Boston University.

Fran said that all of this has been an influence in her work as an artist.

Around 1970 she decided to embrace photography but not to portray the normality day to day life but to use photography to create an imaginative artistic alternative reality employing composite imaging methods.

Fran posed the question is it photography, is it photo montage ,is it a digital montage .is it digital collage ,is it photographic composite is it a painting and why does it matter?

Fran referred historic existence of composite photography long before computers and digital photography existing today . She has embraced today's technology abandoning the pencil for the computer to enable an artistic vision where she creates images that depict lonesomeness ,longing hidden emotions, isolation .solitude and apprehension.

Here she invokes the mid 20th century surrealist movement and the work of the New York painters such as Edward Hopper mostly known for his depiction of isolation within the urban environment as seen in his painting entitled Nighthawks.

Lighting and shadow is used to reveal what lies beneath the surface and the placing of women and girls within an interior space with windows .doors and openings to a space beyond veiled with a sense of threat , menace or foreboding.

A lone figure on a railway platform with the rail track extending into the distance to a point where the parallel lines meet at infinity.

Fran is also the author of several photography books and the images associated with this article are from her latest publication titled The Rest Between two Notes published by Unicorn which integrates her contemporary photography with historical periods and settings from around the world.

Fran also produces video graphic works with similar themes to those mentioned above .The Bangor club was privileged to be the first to see her latest video which depicts a fog shrouded urban environment which points to a disturbing and threatening totalitarianism that many are living through at this time .

Thanks to Fran Forman for the thought provoking vision crafted with such elegance and dedication to her art.

More of Fran's work can be seen at www.franforman.com

Edward McCavana BNDCC Information Officer .