Cynthia Connolly

Cynthia Connolly Exhibition Overview for the Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture Touring Exhibition - 2006

Cynthia Connolly is a Washington, D.C.-based photographer who has had a profound effect on what has come to be called punk photography. While studying at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in the 1980s, Connolly became involved in the seminal D.C. punk scene that revolved around bands like Minor Threat and their label, Dischord Records. Her early forays into photo work featured documentation of the bands, their shows and the cast of characters that made up this scene. In 1988, she released her first book, the self-published Banned in DC which has become highly influential to subsequent generations. Connolly continued to document the loose group of musicians she was associated with, later developing a more conceptual approach to her work. Her series of photographs of musicians posing with their beat-up, old cars featured members of bands such as Bikini Kill, Make-Up, and Bratmobile. The photographs were a celebration of the iconoclastic spirit and a sharp commentary on the nature of status symbols. Recently, Connolly has shifted her focus away from the subject of people and towards the natural landscape. Her documentation of ice machines from across America (over 100 in all) is perhaps her best-known work in this genre. Her amazing panoramas of the California desert, printed in high-contrast black and white, are both frightening and beautiful. Connolly travels to cities across America and Europe for her self-booked art tours, mounting do-it-yourself exhibitions that take place in coffee shops or bookstores for a few days before moving on to the next town. Connolly is also known for unique postcards of her works, which she distributes through alternative book and record stores, galleries and institutions such as The National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., The New Museum in New York, and The Photographic Museum in London.

More info: http://www.iconoclasteditions.com

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Cynthia Connolly
• Beautiful Losers
• contemporary art
• street culture
• photography