In My Own Time: Photographs by Amy Herman and Lauren Doran

Exhibition dates: October 22, 2012 – January 28, 2013
The Light Factory’s Middleton McMillan Gallery (345 N. College Street)
Opening reception: Thursday, Oct. 25 from 6 - 9pm


Amy Herman
Amy Herman (b.1986, USA) earned her BFA in Studio Art from Michigan State University and her MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago.  Herman’s work has been exhibited on a national level by galleries and museums and has been included in several national arts publications.  www.amyherman.com

Through this series of self-portraits, I examine how the people and places one considers intimate can inform identity. I translate banal scenes experienced in my everyday life into dramatic tableaux that place an exaggerated importance on the repetition of our most familiar surroundings. I play a variety of roles in my photographs, most notably that of daughter to my mother and father. Through my photographs I seek to challenge conventional familial relationships and understand how my role within that structure is constantly in flux.



Lauren Doran
Lauren Doran is a native of Delaware now residing in Charlotte, NC.  She has spent the past twelve years honing her skills in photography and finding her voice. Doran has a master’s degree in landscape architecture.  She currently balances being a photographer, landscape designer and mother. Her photographic subjects draw from the realms close to her heart- familial emotions, spirituality and the natural world. www.laurendoran.com

Every marriage has its seasons; seasons of growth, seasons of adversity, seasons of loss, seasons of renewal. This series explores the ever-changing emotional and psychological landscape of a marriage. Green bedroom walls are the backdrop against which I illuminate the dreams, fears, frustrations and love that my husband and I share as we travel through time and in and out of the many seasons of our marriage together. I think of my photographs as visual poems uncovering some essential but unseen thought or spirit. As I work to unearth and illuminate this metaphysical reality, I collect ideas, settings and objects for future photographs.  But it is through the act of creation that the finished idea emerges. Through this exploration I hope to reveal the beauty, tension and complexity inherent in sustaining intimacy in our constantly changing lives.