Self-portrait by Cris Baczek
Cris Baczek was born in Salt Lake City where she began photographing her surroundings when she was a teenager. When her family moved to Santiago, Chile, she realized a passion for the study of geography, science, and art. After returning to Salt Lake, she attended the University of Utah where a darkroom class got her hooked on photography. She has studied art and composition in Florence, Italy, Chicago, and Santa Fe, and now works for the Utah Museum of Fine Arts as the photographer of the collection.
Baczek is interested in the original photographic process of literally writing with light. “This body of work is an experiment in the poetics of the chemical science of photography. I use the landscape as a familiar setting for the chemical reactions. In the field, I shoot 35mm silver gelatin film to capture dramatic lighting in somewhat serene settings. I print the images in the darkroom, painting on the developer and fixer to chemically alter the image. The result is a composition based on the traditional chemical reactions of the photographic process –writing with light.”
Cris was profiled in the February 2007 edition of 15 Bytes.
