Experimental Editing with Ballerina Camryn Rose

“Solar Bloom” features model Camryn Rose began as a regular studio headshot which was digitally solarized, mirrored, and layered with a garden flower to form the idea of clothing. This is early exploration in pushing my work towards surrealist transformation.

“Poppy Balance” by Jamie Solorio featuring ballerina model Camryn Rose Foley photographed in my home studio and then digitally solarized and reflected. Reflection concept inspired by Small Woods Where I Met Myself by Jerry Uelsmann. In addition, digital compositing a macro photograph of a poppy from my garden beginning to bloom where her foot meets a paradigm shift.

Lately I’ve been studying the visual worlds of Elizaveta Porodina and Josef Beyer, trying to understand their “magic sauce” while experimenting with my own composites. These images are an early step in that exploration: breaking down techniques digitally as of now, layering my own photographs, and pushing toward something stranger, in-camera and more surreal in the future. This study has also led me deeper into the history of surrealism, where artists such as Man Ray, Salvador Dalí, Dora Maar, and Leonora Carrington keep resurfacing as touchstones, along with many others. It all began with Porodina’s book, Elizaveta Porodina, which cracked open a new chapter in how I see photography.. This blog is my diary of that process.

Blog update: September 2025: Alessia Glaviano mentioned John Szarkowski in connection with the PhotoVogue “Windows” challenge on Instagram, I felt this work would meet that criteria. Even more important to me was that I had never even heard of John Szarkowski and found learning about him via MoMa’s shared PDF of “Mirrors and Windows” offered quite the education. He was a photographer who was the Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art (‘MoMA”) in NYC from 1962-1991. Reading Szarkowski’s Mirrors and Windows reinforced photographs can mirror, reflecting inner states and self-expression and/or act as a window, revealing something about the world outside us. Most photographs, he reminds us, live in the tension between the two.

He also was the first to create a market for photography “collectable” per an interview I watched with Charlie Rose. Another bit that was interesting to me was his book “The Photographer's Eye” where he divides the photographic image into five components: The Thing Itself (subject), The Detail (clarity of a photograph), The Frame (what is featured in the frame, sometimes most importantly what was left out), Vantage Point (where the photographer stands), Time (exposure time).

“Poppy Balance” echoes what Szarkowski described. The ballerina’s seemingly natural grace mirrors my own past over-consumption, her gaze towards the axis of the poppy refelcts my attempt to find a different kind of balance. The poppy becomes the window, a reminder that nature regenerates. Ballet is performed effortlessness, the body straining to make difficulty look easy. In the same way, consumer culture sells us an ‘effortless’ lifestyle that hides its real costs.

Below is a list of photographers I have begun to study and create boards about on my Pintrest to continue my studies courtesty of MoMa’s “Mirrors and Windows” PDF. AI (chatGPT5) generated content below based off the MoMa PDF fed to it:

Reference Notes: Mirrors and Windows (John Szarkowski, MoMA, 1978)

Introductory essay context

  • Alfred Stieglitz → Edward Weston → Ansel Adams: defined the American tradition of the “eloquently perfect print,” mystical landscapes, and belief in a universal formal language.

  • Paul Strand: insisted art should be measured against social morality, even if his photos didn’t always show it directly.

  • Minor White (Aperture, 1952): extended the Stieglitz/Weston line — spiritual, inward, romantic, mystical.

  • Robert Frank (The Americans, 1959): radical break — small camera, personal vision, social intelligence, realism.

  • Together White and Frank form Szarkowski’s axis: mirror (self-expression) vs window (exploration of the world).

Artists represented in the exhibition/index

  • Romantic/self-expression lean: Jerry Uelsmann, Walter Chappell, Paul Caponigro, Ralph Gibson, Judy Dater, Robert Heinecken, Lucas Samaras, Naomi Savage, Sheila Metzner.

  • Realist/exploration lean: Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus, Bruce Davidson, Danny Lyon, William Eggleston, Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, Nicholas Nixon, Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams, Frank Gohlke, Richard Misrach.

  • Conceptual/experimental lean: Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg, Duane Michals, Jan Groover, Ray Metzker, Tetsu Okuhara, John Divola, Emmet Gowin.

  • Others of note: Andy Warhol, Roy DeCarava, Helen Levitt, Marie Cosindas, Rosalind Solomon.

The book isn’t just a list — it’s Szarkowski’s map of late-20th-century American photography. Stieglitz/Weston/Adams are the roots, Strand the moral voice, White the mystic, Frank the social realist. From there the 84 artists span between “mirror” and “window” — between private vision and public exploration. (chatgpt5)

Currently working on imagery for my art book BIOPHILIAC: Resisting the Rabbit Hole, this image was created with non-extractive materials obtained through my garden. Please subscribe to my newsletter and social media for more info.

Jamie Solorio