Fine Art Photography Daily

Lisa Kokin: Sewn Found Photos

Lisa Kokin’s work in artist’s books, mixed media installation, assemblage and sculpture is about memory, history, and social commentary. She used photographs as objects to create new ways of considering the photographic image and the results are layered, whimsical, artful, and unique.

Her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad. A recipient of a California Arts Council Individual Artist’s Fellowship and a Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation, Ms. Kokin’s work is in numerous public and private collections. She is represented by Seager Gray Gallery in Mill Valley, CA, Tayloe Piggott Gallery in Jackson, WY, Gail Severn Gallery in Sun Valley, ID and Craighead Green Gallery in Dallas, TX.

 Sewn Found Photos 

Sometimes there are inscriptions on the back (“Susie, 7 years old”) but more often they come to me stripped of all identity. I sit in my studio and speculate about the nature of the photographed people’s lives. I will, of course, never know the truth, so I feel it is my job to give them new lives and rescue them from the obscurity they would be headed for were it not for me, humble servant of the arts. I try to invent an altogether different identity for them but of course, in the final analysis these works are more about me than any of the hundreds of anonymous individuals who appear in my work. 

Best Wishes

I am intrigued with other people’s photographic recording of their lives both for the generic quality they possess — the family and social rituals, studio portraits, vacation shots — and for the feeling of sadness and nostalgia that acquiring other people’s memories provokes in me. I feel somehow that it should be illegal to own them, yet since they are for sale it might as well be me who buys them.
Best Wishes, detail
Constellation
Constellation, detail
Forget-Me-Not
Forget-Me-Not, detail
Kith and Kin
kin
Kith and Kin, detail
 
Maternal Instinct
Maternal Instinct, detail
Persona
Persona, detail
Specimens
Specimens, detail
Poetic Justice
Poetic Justice, detail
1963
1963, detail
Afterlife
Afterlife, detail
Class #3
Class #3, detail
Homosexual Lifestyle
Homosexual Lifestyle, detail
Home of the Brave
Home of the Brave, detail
La Caridad
La Caridad, detail
Many Sided, Mute
Many Sided, Mute, detail

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