The Language of Nature is a photographic
exhibit that explores the visual shapes and forms of nature specimens.
Using darkroom processes and the scanner as a camera, Coolen presents
her own mode of cataloguing, classification and organization and looks
to early photography’s zoological framing to tease her visual
accumulation into a photographic vocabulary of her own.
Working with her own gathered specimen collections for this photographic
exploration, Coolen highlights the simplicity of nature objects while
exploring our human urge to make meaning with what surrounds us. She
writes “By arranging and organizing these images of nature objects
in relation to systems of reading and writing we can see a glimmer of
the urge to read these visual forms as marks; to sense the process of
written language.”
The Language of Nature is suggestive rather than literal and
reflects Coolen’s pleasure in hinting at connections to such language
forms as the arabesque, hieroglyphics, runic and twig alphabets, sign
language and shorthand to name a few.
Susan Coolen is a Montreal-based visual artist and has a Bachelor of
Design from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, a BFA in Photography
from Concordia University, and an MFA in Photography from Columbia College
in Chicago. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions across
Canada, the USA and Europe.
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