Suzette Bross, Chicago, USA
Suzette Bross is a photographer living and working in Chicago, Illinois. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, The National Gallery of Art, DC, Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, The New Mexico Museum of Art, the Block Museum, Mass College of Art in Boston, and more. With an MFA from the Institute of Design at IIT, Bross has taught at Columbia College Chicago,the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design and the Northwestern University Medical School. Her work has been exhibited internationally and across the United States. Bross was commissioned by Northwestern Memorial Hospital to create a permanent portrait series of Chicago women (2007) and also included in the Cleveland Museums of Art’s “DIY: Photographers & Books” show. Most recently, Bross exhibited her Walks series in a solo show at Jack Geary Contemporary (2014).
Lucy Watering the Pool
In my work, I seem to be drawn to collecting images of in-between moments. As a parent, I take photographs of my children to record and gather the big moments in their lives – birthdays, holidays etc. As a photographer, and a slightly obsessive gatherer of imagery, I found something more in my snapshots. Between the grins and the grimaces there were moments of contemplation and mystery. My daughters were serious in their play, in their contemplation of something as simple as a hose. The world is big, puzzling, beautiful and scary. While they are exploring it, I want to observe and preserve their childhood adventure before it is gone.
Self Portrait
A pregnant woman’s body is one of the ultimate public and private spaces. Pregnancy is a liminal state with confusing customary and social boundaries. Once I became pregnant, I felt that I was no longer in control of my body. My body became a site of individual and cultural anxiety, happiness and ritual as the act of sex became evident. Our society derives a sense of collectivity from the images it constructs & circulates and most images of pregnancy are either sentimental or grotesque. By photographing myself during pregnancy, I felt that I regained control over my body and also added new images to the collective about one of the oldest states of being, pregnant.
Suzette Bross, February 2008
Commute
“Everyday we make journeys. During these journeys to our intended destinations, it is easy to become detached from the surroundings, lost in thought. It becomes hard to see anything before or beyond what we have already learned to see and most of what we see, when we see, is quick and remote. These photographs are images of transition, images between and bordering seeing and knowing, images of movement through space, fleeting moments in time. These photographs were taken through glass, a car window. We live in an age of accelerated transition. These images are of the 'in between' places. Consider them part of our new picturesque, symbols of America, symbols of internal musing. Can you stop long enough to 'sightsee'?”
Suzette Bross, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 2002
