In the Silence
Soledad Marjon
Created : 1995
Donated : 1996
Medium : Painting
Dimensions: 30 inx40 in
Located: 2nd Floor,North Hallway
An Albuquerque native, Soledad Marjon received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Italian and Spanish from the University of New Mexico. She went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in photography at the University of New Mexico. For her, reading poetry, watching films in Spanish and traveling to Mexico had more to do with her art than any art school training. “When I make photographs, I select a space and objects that not only appeal to me visually but that also invoke some of the same moods as sections of poetry. What I want from the art is the feeling you get from a dream—that fleeting moment that’s pulled out of the dream and stays with you. I don’t make sketches or anything—the photograph is already in my head and I don’t quite know how it happens, but it becomes very ritualistic. I find a place that has a certain feeling about it, and then find a way to enter into it, to become a part of it. I set up a scene and there is this moment of clarity when I can step into it, using myself as another object.” It takes Marjon several hours to set up a scene and photograph it. She arranges every element in her tableaux, puts herself through several costume changes, and yet never knows what the camera has seen until she develops the film. “The image isn’t living until I apply color to the print. When it’s painted it becomes a place, a moment, a parcel of a dream.”
Marjon’s photographs have been exhibited nationally since 1979 at museums and galleries such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography in New York City, the Woman Building Gallery in Los Angeles and the Portland School of Art in Maine.
