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by A. D. Coleman©
Photographs courtesy of Third Eye Photoworks

 first met Connie Imboden in the late 1970s when she was studying
 with an old friend and colleague of mine, Richard Kirstel, at the
  Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, one of the nation's
   oldest art schools. Though still an undergraduate, she took part in
    several graduate-level seminars I conducted at the Institute as a
     Visiting Lecturer during those years.

      We fell out of touch with each other then for quite a while. But, a
       decade after we'd first met, I began seeing images of hers -- the
        early works in the ongoing project represented here -- on exhibition
         announcements, reproduced in magazines, sometimes in group shows.
          They were much different from what she'd produced during the time
           I'd known her: distinctive, provocative, and extremely powerful.

round that time, we re-encountered each other, somewhere on the
 circuit of photography festivals that serves as staging ground for
  what I call the "international image community." I think it was in
   Rockport, Maine that I eventually got to see an extensive portfolio
    of the work she'd produced since 1984, which I'd come across only
     in bits and pieces until then. It was a mature, almost fully resolved
      body of work that looked like no one else's, resembled nothing I'd
       ever seen. I gave her as much encouragement as I could, including
        the advice to take her work to Europe, where I thought she might
         find a more receptive audience for her visions. One way or another,
          I knew things would start to happen for her; the work was too
           substantial to be ignored.

hereafter we kept in touch, crossing paths in Houston at the biennial
 FotoFest and in Arles, France at the annual Rencontres Internationales
  de la Photographie. Connie did indeed begin to find a European audience,
   and one here in the States as well (she now exhibits and publishes 
    internationally, and examples of her work have found permanent homes 
     in a number of major collections). By 1991 she was planning a first 
      monograph, titled Out of Darkness, and invited me to write one of the 
      texts for it. I agreed with pleasure. But the more time I spent with 
       the prints and maquette that she sent up to me, the more obvious it 
        seemed that something other than a traditional critical appreciation 
         was in order. As it happens, I had by then come back to writing poetry
          -- an activity I'd set aside for several decades -- on a steady basis, 
          and I found I couldn't keep that aspect of my sensibility out of the 
           process of engaging with these hallucinatory images.

onnie left those matters entirely in my hands, making no editorial 
 suggestions or demands at all; but the pictures themselves insistently 
  pushed me towards a more experimental, exploratory structure and a meditative, 
   introspective, highly personal prose style. The end result -- a two-voiced 
    text with a heartbeat "sound track" -- was like nothing I'd ever written 
     before, a complete surprise to me and to Connie as well. But it felt right 
      to both of us, and also to her publisher. So it appeared in the book as 
       written. And -- due primarily to the strength of Connie's images and the 
        monograph's fine design and production -- that volume went on to win two 
         major awards in Germany and Switzerland, to sell out its first edition,
          and to become a collector's item within three years.

ith its textual "sound track" turned into an audio track, that prose
 poem of mine appears here, accompanying a special selection of Connie's
  images -- some from that first book, some from her second, and a sampling
   of more recent works as well. I don't think they need any further explanation.
    But you should know that, though Connie is a gifted and interpretative
     photographic printmaker, these images, technically speaking, are traditional
      "straight" photographic prints -- not darkroom-generated photomontages,
      in-camera multiple exposures, or digitally altered images. As the
       photographer says, "They are all seen through the camera, working with
        reflections in water, and with mirrors." Which suggests that, in the
         hands of a picture-maker like Connie Imboden, truly attuned to the 
          the voices of her own angels and demons, the limits of so-called
           "straight" photography pose little restraint. 

GO TO THE IMAGES...