Brittany Nelson

Summary

Brittany Nelson appropriates and distorts processes from 19th century photography to question representation as photographic ideal. In chemically manipulating traditional techniques, such as mordançage and tintype, she causes unprecedented reactions in the materials, which result in extraordinary abstract imagery. In continuation of feminist and queer abstraction, she unfetters photography's constraints of resemblance to real-world referents, to include technological utopias, spaceflight and time travel, and feminist science fiction, particularly the writing of Alice B. Sheldon--who wrote under the pen name James Tiptree, Jr. to insulate herself against the misogynist attitudes cultivated in science fiction circles, and allowing her write about her own lesbian desires.