BIOGRAPHY
Chloe Sells was born in Aspen, Colorado and began photographing in 1993. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design, from which she graduated in 2000 and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography with honors. For two years thereafter, she worked at Anderson Ranch in Aspen, Colorado with Terri Weifenbach, John Gossage, Donald Sultan and Ann Lauterbach. She was personal assistant to Hunter S. Thompson for two years preceding his death. Chloe currently lives between Los Angeles and Maun, Botswana.
TOOLS
Chloe uses a Contax 645 and Linhof 4x5 to create her pictures. She still uses good old film. The photographs are archivally printed either by the artist or a master printer. Individual images are printed in editions of 9.
ARTIST STATEMENT
The photographs I create document relationships between place and movement, the ordinary verses the exotic and tradition running parallel to change. Driven by a desire to hold sacred that which is distinctive, I travel incessantly and find “home” all over the world. Through the process of appropriating stories from places that I visit or live, the imagery becomes a physical and emotional remapping.
While photographing people, where they live, their remnants, cultural signage and architecture, I look to form a visual confederacy that explores paradox in overlapping identities and histories, both personal and universal. Found in the pictures are stylistically motley combinations: quips and antics, nostalgic and sentimental moments, traditional landscapes and dreamy tourist destinations. Abstract color fields remain out of focus, as if half-remembered or once dreamt, and give voice to our internal landscapes.
In the work, scenes that depict mundane everyday living, paradise, or the exotic become romantic landscapes. With the advent of experiencing life through virtual arenas and the loss of connection with the corporeal world, these images remind the viewer of something idyllic and perhaps even a way of living lost. However, upon second glance, the work becomes a chronicle of places which are in our midst and very much alive. The use of color is integral to visually bridge the gap between what we consider to be unknown and that which we recognize. As objects of documentation, the photographs bring interior and exterior existence, and foreign and intrinsic worlds into confluence.
For me, the work and the way that I go about making it, is about defying the homogenized world that is encroaching over the unwitnessed landscapes of bizarre and discrete terrains, and giving my visual voice to that which is still unique within the morass of thriving cultures.