Patricia Nolan’s work is classical black and white photography, shot with natural light and hand processed in her studio darkroom. She makes silver gelatin prints, which she often paints with oil, using a unique process she developed while living in Mexico. Inspired by the brilliant colors of the culture she was living in, her painting is vibrant and strikingly chromatic. She developed the particular process of hand painting that she uses over many years of experiment, from a desire to work with color in a more immediate and personal way than the color photographic process.
For the past few years, she has been working with triptychs in thematic groupings that are defined by the obvious visual as well as the imagined subtext. “The photographs I am working on now are part of an ongoing exploration of finding a narrative between the projected story of the subjects I photograph and my own subjective experience. I find this to be in part inevitable and in part deliberate. I like working in multiples to further the sense of an episodic event between the image portrayed and the imagined story somewhere inside the picture.”
Patricia Nolan is an internationally recognized photographer whose career spans over thirty years. Born in NYC where she has mainly resided, she began her career as a photo-journalist in New York and Paris in the 1960’s and 70’s, working in political and social issues for the Associated Press and such publications as Ramparts, Rallying Point and the Village Voice.
While living in Mexico in the 1970’s she was the photography editor of Asuntos En El Arte (Issues In The Arts), and a photographer for the National Anthropological Institute doing site work for archaeologists and fieldwork for anthropologists. She was a still photographer for the Cinemateca National de Mexico and for various film projects including the award winning documentary Vendidores Ambulantes.
In New York in the 1980’s, Nolan worked in fashion photography for the Soho News, event photography for the Italian Consulate, and photo-journalism on the arts in downtown Manhattan. Her photo-documentation for conceptual artists has been installed in such venues as Artists’ Space, the Kitchen, Franklin Furnace, and P.S.1. Nolan also edited and printed all the photography for Shamans in Blindenland (Shamans in the Blind Country), anthropologist Dr. Michael Oppitz’ book of photographs and essays of the Shamans in Nepal. She worked as professional and personal photographer for the fashion designer Betsey Johnson for over 15 years. From the early 1970’s to the present, she has worked extensively in commissioned portraiture.
Throughout her career, her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries in the U.S. and internationally. She was represented by the Germans Van Eyck Gallery in Soho, NYC. Since 1990, she has focused mainly on photography for exhibitions and commissions.
