jesseca Ferguson
We are so very pleased to feature Jesseca Ferguson, an artist working in nineteenth century photographic processes, such as cyanotype, anthotype, and pinhole photography. She uses mixed media featuring found images, objects, documents, and organic materials. She also makes artist books. Her works are in numerous collections including the Museum of Fine Arts/Boston, The Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock Abbey, England, and Harvard Art Museums. Her handmade photography works have been published in numerous publications nationally and internationally. Jesseca Ferguson is a bit of a legend, and we are very excited to share her works and get a glimpse of her remarkable process and point of view. - Steven J. Duede, Artist
Collaged and Constructed
The name for Jesseca Ferguson’s website is “Museum of Memory,” which is an astute and succinct way of describing her art, and the impact that it has. We think of museums as physical places that house objects, care for them, and display them in ways that encourage viewing, contemplation, and understanding. Memory brings us to the past, recalling things that were real and experiences that happened (maybe); but memories are often not particularly clear. A “Museum of Memory” then might reach back and make ephemeral things from the past tangible, and that action is viscerally felt in Ferguson’s work.
This series, titled Collaged and Constructed, combines work rooted in photographic processes with the handwork associated with merging object, text, and image. The pieces appear assembled, collaged together as if they had been ripped from a book and rearranged, or layered and pasted to the back of a carte de visite. Each work, which often combines imagery with text, is presented as if part of a larger historical narrative. The viewer feels that they are glimpsing a personal archive that had been packed away and has just recently been discovered. References to science and art, typologies presented like a cabinet of curiosities, forces the mind to travel backwards. Ferguson describes the photograph as “a story written with light,” and like memory, it may reference “a story that may, in fact, never have happened.”
Jessica Roscio
Director and Curator, Danforth Art Museum
“You can close your eyes to reality, but not to memories.”
-Stanislaw Lec (1909-1966)
Museum of memories
I work with handmade photography and collage in a studio filled with old books and other oddments.
Interacting synergistically, these objects enable me to continue my ongoing investigation of the photograph as a story written with light – a story that may, in fact, never have happened.
“Separation penetrates the disappearing person like a pigment and steeps him in gentle radiance.”
… Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)
Jesseca Ferguson
photo by @CelebxCole
Jesseca Ferguson works at the intersection of 19th century handmade photographic processes, collage, and artist books. Selected public collections holding her work include the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Book Art Museum, Łódż, Poland; Museum of the History of Photography, Kraków, Poland; The Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock Abbey, England, and Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA. Her work has been supported by Art Matters, Inc., the Trust for Mutual Understanding, and MacDowell, among others. Her images and photo-objects have been published in numerous books, catalogues, and articles on the subject of handmade photography here in the US and abroad.
Jesseca lives and works in a co-operative live-work artist building located in the Fort Point area of Boston, MA. She holds undergraduate degrees from Harvard University and Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She received her MFA from Tufts University (in conjunction with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). As an artist-educator, Jesseca taught for many years at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (SMFA@Tufts) and other New England institutions. She continues to offer workshops and lectures.
Visit Jesseca