Pennelope Goodfriend

Taken from exotic locations around the world, my photographs are in a sense self-portraits, expressing a bond of communication which reaches out from both sides of the camera and reassures us that no matter how disparate our lives and worlds are, we are not alone.

The photographs display moments observed or shared with people whose lives affect us in passing. When you look at the photos, the actual experience remains unknown; you see only one image at a specific but undefined moment of time. The layers of communicable understanding that at once unify and isolate individuals and the qualities of anonymity and self-awareness, what a person chooses to reveal about themselves, are inherent in the work. The viewer plays an essential role in imagining a hypothetical version of these experiences. These are only brief glimpses of strangers whose costumes and circumstances create an atmosphere of mystery and ambiguity.

My work incorporates text fragments and stories and more recently collage. I've also created a series utilizing multiple exposures, pre-visulaized and shot within the camera (as opposed to being manipulated in the darkroom or with a computer). This creates stories as ambiguous and unknown as the encounters betwe...