For 2013 McKee Photography Grant winners Max Blomgren ’14 and Celina García ’15, artwork is about examining the world in a nuanced and creative way.
The McKee Photography Fund was endowed in 2003, named after the retirement of Bowdoin photography professor John McKee. First established in 2008, the grant awards one or two students with $1,000 to supplement expenses in a photography project over the summer. Upon returning to campus, the students are expected to display their work and give a presentation about their summer experience.
Blomgren has been interested in photography since high school, focusing on black-and-white darkroom photography.
Blomgren said he “had always been interested in the camera and…taking pictures for capturing memories.”
While at Bowdoin, Blomgren developed a particular interest in cyanotype—a printing process that produces a cyan-blue colored print. After studying the cyanotype at Bowdoin, he decided he wanted to study the process in greater depth and applied for the McKee Grant.
Blomgren said that his summer project focused on “memories from a surgery I had [during] freshman year,” he said.
“I explored different feelings and thoughts that [were] going through my head, trying to reconcile them and understand them more. He said that visually displaying the emotions on paper helped him to understand what he was going through.
In contrast to Blomgren, García bought her first camera at a yard sale when she was 15, but she only began to explore photography more seriously during her sophomore year, when she took her first photography class at Bowdoin. At the end of that semester, she decided to apply for the McKee Grant.
“The general gist of [my] proposal was exploring the relationships people have to places, and that expanded a little bit into things as well,” she said.
She grew up in two different states and said that the focus of her project was informed, in part, by her personal experiences.
As she was conducting the project, she asked herself, “What does a place mean to a person? How do we form these associations?” She came to the conclusion that “a place isn’t the same, depending on who’s there…a place is the intersection of where you are and the people who are there, and that’s what makes it special. Our very presence informs that space.”
Associate Professor of Art Michael Kolster advised both Blomgren and García on their projects this summer.
Blomgren’s project is entitled “Memory” and is currently on display and the Fishbowl Gallery in the Visual Arts Center, while García’s project is entitled “Porque También Somos lo que Hemos Perdido”—Because We Are Also What We Have Lost—and is in the Main Gallery in the Edwards Center for Arts and Dance. Both projects will be on display in their respective locations until tomorrow.