marcie jan bronstein

"Holding On, Letting Go" is a series that focuses on formative relationships that shift, grow, evolve, crumble, and of course inevitably disappear. The children in my photographs are held, led, and supported by people who can’t possibly continue to exist in the same way that they existed in the moment I captured them on film. The negative image in combination with the positive image creates a tension that evokes this idea—
that relationships are here, and then they are gone, and that every single
moment is experienced, and then it transmutes in a flash into a memory.

The process of creating images doesn’t necessarily help me to demystify the transient, impermanent world around me, but it allows me to live more fully inside of the questions that I find to be most compelling: How can we live with ease, as our relationships perpetually move and change? How can we fully experience the present when we are so formed (and often consumed) by our histories? How can we possibly let go of the past? And what are we holding on to... a reality, or a constructed reality?

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Marcie Jan Bronstein has been creating photo-based art for more than twenty five years.
Known for her unique, hand-colored images and her work with the photographic negative,
her images are exhibited, published, and collected in the U.S. and abroad.

A studio artist / designer, Bronstein is the author of three published books of photographs
and the creator of a number of large-scale public works. Her work is whimsical, painterly, and in the words of one critic, "filled with a sense of power and a tranquil still-life vision."