Contemporary female photographer, Tarrah Krajnak, currently lives and works in Burlington, Vermont. She received her BFA (1997-2001) at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio and then went on to get her MFA (2001-2004) at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana. “ I am interested in the archive and its relationship to self-hood, the body, and personal memory. The nature of the photograph itself, both structural and psychoanalytical theories, also play an important role in my creative process. My work is an exploration of multiple approaches: altered found imagery, collage or works on paper, performance, collaboration, and video.” (Excerpt from Artist Website)
Krajnak has a strong background in the art education field as well as being an independent photographer. Her public lectures include talks at Johnson Sate College, Elmira College, Cornell University, DePauw University and a National Conference put on by the Society for Photographic Education. Her career in the arts consists of art and art history lecturer for the University of Vermont in Burlington and Visiting Assistant for the art, art history, and design department at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. In 2004-2005 she was a photography technician and instructor at Cornell University and in 2001-2004 Krajnak was a teaching assistant in the art department at the University of Notre Dame. With a great photographic background, Krajnak was employed by NBC Studios in 2001 as a photography studio assistant for Saturday Night Live in New York, New York. Also, Krajnak has won several awards in her early professional career. In 2006, she received a Cornell Council for the Arts Project Grant from Cornell University. In 2006 she received a Cornell Council for the Arts Individual Grant from Cornell University as well. From 2001-2004 Krajnak received a Graduate Teaching Fellowship from the University of Notre Dame. In 2003, she was the recipient of the Juror’s Prize from the Annual Region Competition from South Bend Regional Museum of Art. And lastly, she won a National Scholarship Photography Award in 2004 from the Society for Photographic Education.
A good amount of work that I looked at by Krajnak was her collaborative work with another female artist; Wilka Roig. Krajnak and Roig have a joint website where they display their collaborative photography and film work. One of their collections titled “Untitled #” began in 2005 and is still in the works up to the present. “In (Untitled #) Tarrah and Wilka present the hidden layers behind images to be consumed: the processes, the performances, the negotiation, the relationships that make up the final image and the ultimate meaning. (Ultimate #) allows them to analyze themselves as minority/collaborative/women artists in the same way they analyze trends in photography. Krajnak and Roig place themselves and their own images amidst the photography they are critically investigating.” (Except from Krajnak and Roig’s website) Their “Cast of Characters” series is one that I feel is very visually and conceptually pleasing. This collection is a series of diptychs with a portrait of the photographer and a portrait of the model side by side. The two are dressed similarly and are placed in similar positions. The lighting and feel to the diptychs are studio set-ups and clean white lighting. These portraits are for the most part emotionless and have very little movement to them.
A collection of theirs, Krajnak and Roig, that I felt very drawn to was one of their recent collaborations titled “Aftermath”. Taking place in a gallery setting, with clean even light, both females are dressed in white body suits and moving into identical positions with one another. They seem to be serving as this sort of mobile sculpture among the flat work that is hanging on the gallery walls behind them.
Artist Website of Tarrah Krajnak
Tarrah & Wilka's Website
Wilka Roig Bio
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