Interview
Cathy Immordino
Cathy Immordino is a Los Angeles-based photographer, whose layered images form composites of personal experience and public spaces. Drawing on techniques and methods from fine art and photojournalism, Immordino’s optical layering serves as an evocative visual allegory for the complex narratives of life and memory.
Immordino began her photography career after years of being a film actress, a set of experiences whose highs and lows she documented, along with architectural and urban landscape photographs of Hollywood at night.
In subsequent projects and series, including a major endeavor based on her own ancestry and the history of immigration in her immediate family, she has continued to refine and evolve this fundamental structure. Layering her own stories and observations against backdrops of iconic architecture, landscapes, and public spaces where they unfolded. In this way she collapses both time and space in a surreal but familiar language composed of art history, biographical reportage, and photographic technology.
Immordino has exhibited her work in galleries and institutions across the United States, co-founded the Shed Collective, and is associated with MOPLA, the LA Center for Photography, the Los Angeles Art Association, Center Santa Fe, and the Society of Photographic Educators.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“I grew up studying the arts. As a child, my mom made sure I was involved in many art and music classes as well as acting workshops. I would like to think that my path into photographic art began when I was 5 years old and was gifted a polaroid camera to help occupy my time while recovering from a car accident. I remember wasting many packs of polaroid’s as attention seeking behavior while being trapped in a bed in a full body cast.
Growing up in Minnesota, the arts were a big part of my life and extracurricular activities. I never really thought of the arts as a means for income, as I was raised to believe that one couldn't live a decent life as a starving artist. Perhaps my venture into the arts was just to prove that concept or idea was wrong. My path into the art world started in the music industry. I lived outside of Memphis, Tennessee during high school and wrote songs and performed frequently, participating in several music projects as well as being a singer-songwriter. I moved out to Los Angeles to pursue that path in the year 2000.
In 2003, I had a major surgery to remove a grapefruit sized cyst on my right ovary that made performing music difficult. The low frequencies made me nauseous to the point where I pursued other art forms. I began acting and had several small roles in TV shows and movies. In 2008, there was a Writer's Guild Strike. As work dried up, I looked for other avenues for expression, which led to me taking up photography as a means for income and ended up photographing massive raves and parties at the Playboy Mansion as well as local night clubs throughout Los Angeles. I enjoyed doing this as I would never normally go to these events. Bringing a camera there was more fun to me than just showing up as a patron. I loved documenting parties where people dressed up in costumes or attire they wouldn't normally be seen in public wearing.
I continued to do this type of photojournalism until a drunk bar patron roughed me up, throwing my camera to the ground and breaking the sense and mirror box. Shortly after, I discovered fine art photography and photographic art. This is where I began to find my voice in photography as a means of expression.”
What inspires you most?
“Life inspires me. Studying and observing people and their reactions to the world and their own lives inspired me to realize the human condition is similar, and we all go through similar events at different moments in time. I am really driven by sharing my own experiences and stories through my work. My biggest influence on the direction of my photographic art happened when I was hospitalized for 7 weeks during a dramatic pregnancy, with only the ability to document it with my iPhone. I created a body of work from this called ‘Cry for Help’ that involved photo-montaging and collaging different images together to try and convey my experience to a wider audience. This work was really therapeutic for me. I have noticed that it helps to talk about traumatic events and find other people with similar experiences so you don't feel alone in these situations.
Beyond that series, I found inspiration in pointing out how if pieces of myself could be altered, perhaps others would like me more. Or probably better stated that as a society, we judge people based on how they look. In the entertainment industry, I remember going to casting calls and noticing that all of the other actors and actresses in the room had similar looks but we each had our differences in eye color, face shape, body shape and hair styling. When I was going through a divorce and on dating apps, I noticed something similar in the profiles I would look at. I felt I had to make this series based on that inspiration from life and the human condition. Another source of great inspiration is my children and how other people make me feel. I find art as a means to vent my frustrations in life.”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“My work revolves around family and sociology. It captures the human condition – telling emotional and intellectual stories through two-dimensional photography. What begins in the camera does not stay the way it was captured. I go on to print layered montages and fragments applying processes like cyanotype, photogravure, and 3D reductive printmaking to augment and express their conceptual intent.”
How would you describe your work?
“My previous work would be documentary, photomontage or photo collage. My more recent work is experimental photographic art. I would describe this as raw emotion emitted through a piece of paper.”
“Weaving stories across generations, genres, continents, and mediums, I like to think of photography as a starting point in my art making process. With the addition of hand-restored and lavishly embellished vintage frames, I endeavor to find the deeper meaning in humanity, life, and traumatic situations galvanizing through my art.”
Which artists influence you most?
“Wow, great question! Imogen Cunningham's double exposures, Hannah Hoch and the entire Dada Movement, the late Jerry Uelsmann, Grete Stern and the ParkeHarrisons.”
What is your creative process like?
“My current process is taking photographic emulsions, or light sensitive chemicals, and running the image through a CO2 laser to produce the results of a one-of-a-kind photographic print. I call these lasertypes. The image is part photograph and part ash. I really delved into this process during lockdown and started mixing different photographic emulsions like cyanotype and van dyke brown together to achieve a wider tonal range. It felt therapeutic to throw emulsion on the paper and watch it toxically burn in the hour to two hours it took to engrave on to the paper. I would wash the prints, wipe away ash in certain areas and apply paint or gold leaf. The bad prints I didn't throw out. I took those and made cutout stencils of the coronavirus and spray painted around them and further added paint and hand illustration to convey my frustrations.”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“I believe an artist's role in society is to make people feel or understand something they may have overlooked. The work alone doesn't always convey this. It is really important for the viewer to read what the artist's intention with the work was either before or after seeing the work. The perspective changes and hopefully the viewer takes away something meaningful or is moved emotionally by the work.
It is hard to say how I see that evolving. With NFTs, some work elicits a strong response to what is going on in society. What I see in the art fairs hasn't fully taken on this view yet. I could be going to and showing at the wrong fairs for these kinds of conceptual art to really be making an impact. Art has always had a voice on the sides of politics and what is going on in the economy. I don't see that changing much. Thanks to the internet, I do see more artists being able to get their voice and message out to a larger audience though. Art could have an impact strong enough to unify the majority of the planet in causes, for instance, much like the impact of Elvis Presley influenced cultural changes with his music and appropriation, opening the minds and eyes of generations to follow.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
“I had a solo show recently at USC's Keck School of Medicine that was showcasing the series ‘Cry for Help’, with a gynecologist and maternal psychologist who discussed it with me. I also exhibited my work at the MIA Photo Fair in Milan in April and Art Vancouver in May.”
Website: www.cathyimmordino.com
Instagram: @cathyimmordinoart
