This two-person exhibition features the photographs of David Blackett of Stratford, Connecticut and Lys Guillorn of Shelton, Connecticut. What the two have in common is their work is shot entirely with medium-format film. Blackett uses antique, vintage and plastic cameras, and Guillorn uses a Holga toy camera almost exclusively. The initial letters of the exhibition's title are an acronym for "film".
David Blackett, a longtime Stratford, Connecticut, resident grew up in rural Massachusetts, and studied photography at Maine Photographic Workshops and Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. His photography is influenced heavily by coastal living in both subject matter and attitude.
Blackett says, "My approach with photography has always been: 'I just want to go out and play with my cameras and make some pictures'. It’s what I do to have fun and to relax. I rarely go out 'on a mission' to make a statement of some sort. If I see something I like the looks of, I take a picture."
The result is organic and sometimes dream-like, two qualities which Blackett's photography shares with Lys Guillorn's.
Guillorn is a lifelong Fairfield County resident who uses photography to document the otherworldly qualities she finds everyday landscapes and structures. Many of her photographs depict shadows of trees on buildings caught in early morning sunlight or later in the day, during what photographers call "the golden hour". She studied photography at Snow Farm in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, and is a photographic printmaker by trade.
Lys Guillorn uses an entirely plastic toy camera to capture her images on black and white film, which she then scans digitally, and has printed digitally by Master Printmaker Mark Savoia of Still River Editions. "I have a digital SLR camera, but I like my Holga better because it's light and because of the softness it adds. I use Photoshop to enhance the tone and contrast, but the blurry and dark edges--that's all in the negatives. Though I like things like Instagram on my phone, I think it’s cheating a bit.”