hannon calla fearn

bio.

I was 15 when I first picked up a film camera -- my father's old 35mm Nikon. At that time I was a frustrated studio artist, struggling to make myself understood with charcoal and oil paints. Mediocre skills meant that my intended message was often lost in translation; I simply wasn't articulate enough in my chosen medium.

 

I found my eloquence looking through a lens. Without the preoccupation of an incoherent and unsteady hand, I was suddenly free to concentrate on the narrative rather than the conveyance of my artist's story.

 

My high school photographic endeavors culminated in a series of portraits entitled "The Faces of Lyme Disease." Growing up in southeastern Pennsylvania afforded me many great image opportunities in the way of landscapes, but it also condemned me to a life of joint pain and seizures at the hands of my Chronic Lyme Disease.

 

In college, I transitioned from 35mm to medium-format film, shooting first on a borrowed Mamiya 7 II, before receiving my very own Mamiya C33 as a Christmas present from another local Philadelphia photographer. I was fortunate to have as my professors a number of contemporary artists, and under the tutelage of the likes of Michael Spano, Lois Connor and Joel Sternfeld, I honed my craft.

 

At the age of 28, I'm still finding my voice. I'd often aggravate professors with my photographic flights of fancy; one week I'd turn in studio portraits, the next, urban landscapes. In a fit of whimsical inspiration, I once produced a series that in which I painted my model with esoteric symbols and captured her cavorting carelessly through the woods in spritely, naked abandon.

 

I possess a penchant for absurd, fantastical narratives and a probing, restless eye. I am determined to transform the mundane into the monumental, and the monumental into the mundane. You're welcome to peruse my eclectic Instagram page for every-day examples of this.