Colleen Keihm
Holding Site

1224 W Loyola Ave, Chicago IL
October 5, 2019 - October 26, 2019



Colleen Keihm is breaking down the mechanics of the camera and manipulating how the resulting images. Originally from Levittown, NY, Keihm received her BA in Photography from Drexel University and her MFA from University of Illinois at Chicago. She has been an artist in residence at Hatch Projects and Studio 3325 in Chicago and at the Insitut fur alles Mogliche in Berlin, Germany. She is a part of the Midwest Photographers Project at the Museum of Contemporary Photography where her photograms and prints will be accessible to the public for the next three years. For more information, please visit colleenkeihm.com.

Above: image made through cellphone Vortoscope; below: an image of a head-worn Vortoscope.



We no longer rely on single points of perspective as we move through the world. Instead, we pan and swipe through our constantly changing environments. I want my work to move in a similar way. I want you to see yourself amongst fractured architecture when using and walking with the Vortoscopes. Experiencing staged, resolved optical illusions created in camera offer a disorientation that is closer to my own experience. These works are reflecting on the impermanent nature of exhibitions, the footprint and effects of architecture, and a history of light. Instead of reinforcing the chaotic world we are living in these photographs and objects provide grounding and space to find your own footing.

A deep interest in the behavior of light drives me to construct images and replace gradients. I want to control an experience of light and, in some cases, the horizon because its own path can reveal or obscure information that it had once shown. Using archived images from past exhibitions to create photograms and cyanotypes, I revised daylight's history at Roman Susan. The resulting zine is a blueprint of light falling in the space before drastic change outside occurs.

    – Colleen Keihm


Holding Site Exhibition Guide (PDF)