Jackie Bouchard, a senior at the University of Rhode Island, is a fine arts major with a passion for photography.
Bouchard discovered her knack for photography during the junior year of high school when she received a camera as a birthday present. Since then she has taken art classes to enhance her photography skills and uses her Tumblr page to collect archives for photographs and to find inspiration from other photographs displayed on the website. For her pictures, Bouchard likes to use a medium format Holga film camera or a Canon Rebel T3i.
After high school, Bouchard enrolled herself into The Art Institute of Boston, now part of the Lesley University College of Arts and Design, before coming to The University of Rhode Island.
Bouchard’s earliest sources of inspiration were reality shows such as “America’s Next Top Model.” She became interested in fashion photography after watching various photographers navigate through the fashion industry on similar programs. She found inspiration in the numerous installations in museums and has always enjoyed visiting them.
However, in the recent years, Bouchard has shifted her focus from fashion photography to more abstract mediums. She has gained an appreciation for collage work after being inspired by the works of German Collage Artist Hannah Hoch. Hoch is considered to be one of the inventors of photomontage, an art form of creating a montage constructed from photographic images.
Bouchard has also developed an interest in landscape photography. “I would say I’m interested in portraying nature and natural subjects in any unique way as possible,” Bouchard said. Her recent work focuses more on nature or organic shapes and forms.
“A lot of my work is kind of about the moment,” Bouchard said, describing her artistic process. “The most recent series I have been working on are pretty different, a complete experimentation in abstract photography. The way I choose to create an abstract photograph is to simply move the image in the darkroom during exposure, so the process is relatively random. I particularly like high contrast in silver gelatin prints from the darkroom, and so I find myself looking for that in a lot of my prints, especially when I’m evaluating my work prints before I get one I like.”
She enjoys taking pictures in black and white, however, she also enjoys color photographs that are on the warmer side of the color wheel. Bouchard hopes to work for a travel magazine one day and travel the world experiencing new cultures through her photography.
Bouchard described her favorite photograph, saying, “I have a color film print that I took of a dark red tree and an older styled green window against a tan stone wall. The colors and composition are just aesthetically pleasing. I took that picture when I went to school in Cambridge, and most of the pictures I took in Cambridge are really great memories. I enjoy looking at my work from that time of my life a lot for future inspiration. “
In the future Bouchard would like to spend more time working on her professional website. She would like to use her photography skills in various ways. Currently, she is working on a project for her senior seminar class and a student student show that is being held at Hera Gallery in May. The project focuses on a series of abstract black and white photographs of flowers, shadows and lights. It will include one print on the wall, and the rest will be a hanging installation meant to engage the viewer.