KATE CORDSEN: RAVINE

"Like many photographers, I am intrigued by how the brief and the ephemeral become permanent in a photographic print. And like all photographers, I am obsessed with the notion of reality as it relates to photography. The photo alienates us from direct experience and thus gives us a more intense second-hand experience. The result is an illusion of knowledge of a place, and of a moment.

I walk the trails in and around the Connecticut River Valley almost daily. The area is one with deep roots in the history of American art and not surprisingly, tremendous beauty. In this series of landscape photos, I explore the idea of knowing this place. Using the filter of pond and river water, the images further enhance the distance between the viewer and the scene. Ripples and debris in the water remind us that we are separate bystanders and that that particular moment no longer exists."

Kate Cordsen, July 13, 2013

Raised in Great Falls, Virginia, Cordsen now lives in Essex, Connecticut and New York City. Cordsen’s travels to some of the most remote places on earth as well as her time living in Asia (in Manila as a child of a Peace Corps leader and later in Japan before graduate school) have greatly influenced her spare aesthetic. Cordsen’s photographs are in private collections worldwide and have been published in varied regional, national and international publications. In addition to graduate art history work at Harvard University and photography studies at ICP, she has a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University and a bachelor’s degree in art history from Washington and Lee University (where she was notably the first woman to graduate). She sits on or has sat on arts related boards including: The Japan Society, Concordia Conservatory, The Connecticut River Museum, and The Artist Residency Program.

"Cordsen's success has much to do with her instincts in emotional expression."  Artscope, 2013

"Her landscapes are, at first glance, simply meditative, but reveal impassioned and dramatic depths upon second and third looks." Artscope, 2013

“The natural world is simply where the magic begins, transformed by Cordsen’s astonishing eye into images that are exquisitely ambiguous.” Grace Magazine, 2013

“Kate Cordsen’s images are ethereal" Hartford Courant, 2013

“There are many very good photographers in the world but only a handful can breakout into a rarified world and truly be called an artist. Kate Cordsen is one of those photographers” Richard Wiese, Emmy-winning producer and host of Born to Explore