Born in Ojai, California
San Francisco Art Institute, BFA
University of Alabama, MLIS, Archival Studies, 2025
Lives and works in Birmingham, Alabama
Fine Arts Specialist, Hoover Public Library
Gallery Director, Ground Floor Contemporary
IG: @jennymarshall
Jennifer Marshall is a visual artist and curator that works primarily within the boundaries of film and camera conceptual projects, and her overt focus is often the materiality and temporality of film. Born in Ojai, California, and raised in Bakersfield and Los Angeles, she received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and is pursuing an MLIS in Archival Studies at The University of Alabama. Currently, Marshall is the Gallery Director at Ground Floor Contemporary, produces the visual arts exhibitions program at the Hoover Public Library, and lives and works in Birmingham, AL.
ARTIST STATEMENT
What is a subversive image? Can a subtle refusal of traditional subject matter render an image subversive, or is this achievement an impossibility? Perhaps the photograph is an intrinsically non-subversive art object, and to attempt a dismantling of this form is absurd. However, my approach has an element of medium consideration simply because my work is often a craving for the materiality of film and the rejection of narrative structures. Within this praxis, I operate on a reductionist level. I engage with subjects that are in close proximity, allow a ritual-based process to dictate the act of photographing, and gravitate toward the still life document. Magnetism and fixation are generators of action, and seduction by a subject is often an instinctual response to color, light, form, and repetition. Congruently, I emphasize minute virtues that provide the visual foundation of the medium, such as the film frame, the grain of the film, light leaks, the focus, and the layering of exposures, as these all hint at the inner dimensionality of film and are artifacts and signifiers that provide evidence of the material. Furthermore, by utilizing the macro capabilities of the 4x5 camera, an elimination of context is achieved, the traditional perspective of the viewer can be broken, and other elements, such as surface texture and time residue, can be foregrounded. Through all these applications, a semiotic milieu materializes that is both ambiguous and tangible. This amorous gesture and materialist approach is coupled with the premise that the past cannot be removed from the present and that history resides within the landscape, living matter, objects, and interior spaces. I see a canyon as a record and a document, just as the camera and the archive are generative symbols and systems.