Carol Eisenberg is a fine art photographer whose constructed digital images blur the line between painting and photography, drawing upon the polarities of beauty and decay, the natural and the human-made. Her compositions begin with originally sourced imagery selected from photographs she shoots in the studio or on location near her homes in Maine and Israel and on her travels. The images exist in an abstract realm that unites intentional creation with a fluid, intuitive approach to composition and color.
Eisenberg received her MFA in Media Arts and Photography from Maine Media College, Rockport, ME. Her work is in public and private collections nationwide and has been featured in Décor Maine, Maine Arts Journal, Portland Press Herald, LensCulture, and other publications. It has been exhibited at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME; the Maine Jewish Museum, Portland, ME; LC Bates Museum, Fairfield, ME; and the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA. Eisenberg is represented by Carver Hill Gallery, Camden, ME; Susan Spiritus Gallery, Irvine, CA; and MMPA Gallery, Portland, ME. Her work has also been shown at A Smith Gallery, Johnson City, TX; Cove Street Arts, Portland, ME; Grant Wahlquist Gallery, Portland, ME; Southeast Center for Photography, Greenville, SC; Photo Place Gallery, Middlebury, VT; New York Center for Photographic Art, New York, NY; Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Denver, CO; and Center for Photographic Arts, Carmel, CA.
Images are original photo-based digital constructions printed on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Metallic or by dye sublimation onto aluminum. Editions by size, 22.5 x 30 inches to 45 x 60 inches; custom sizes available.
artist statement
In late 1969, when I was six months pregnant, company policy forced me to leave a job I loved. I became a feminist and went to law school rather than art school, as originally intended. After a 36-year career as a lawyer, at age 71, I returned to school for an M.F.A. in photography. During my studies, I realized how profoundly my art is informed by my lifelong engagement with feminism, particularly the struggle against rigid gender roles. The most obvious example is how my images blur the distinction between painting and photography, resisting conventional notions of what a photograph should be.
My visual language is one of layering and collage, a fusion of disparate elements that are simultaneously cohesive and contradictory. Within the same image, surfaces are translucent, opaque, three-dimensional, and flat. Color is used both naturally and expressively. Pictorial content is drawn from the natural environment and the constructed world. My feminist concerns are nowhere more evident than in my engagement with beauty. I have always loved fashion and adornment, but with a feminist lens see the damage inflicted on women by their objectification. While my images embrace the beautiful, they contain marks, scratches, and other forms of disfiguration. Similarly, graffiti and urban detritus appear in my pictures as elements of rebellion and unconventional beauty.