Leah Oates

Interview with Leah Oates

Can you share what initially drew you to explore the concept of “transitory spaces”? How did this theme emerge in your artistic practice?

Everyone lives in a world of change and transition and the landscape is also always changing constantly. My work aims to reflect this flux and change in the photographic image and within human perception and experience. Transitory Space conveys the visual and thematic aims of my work.

Your work often involves multiple exposures to capture the complexities of time and space. What does this technique mean to you in expressing the fleeting nature of these environments?

When I look back on a moment it’s full of impressions and multiple exposures capture this. I make multiple exposures on specific frames in camera which allows me to display a more complete correlation of experiences that a single exposure just misses. Every moment captured on film is over as soon as the shutter clicks, recording the ephemeral. Yet, in reality, there is always a visual cacophony of experience. We are always living in many realities at once. Multiple exposures express the way we experience the world more accurately.

In “Transitory Space,” you speak about the coexistence of contradictory realities. How do you navigate these contradictions through your photographic process?

A camera can capture an essence of a moment in life but any art media has limits compared to actual life yet art is also a record of life. Time is layered and not frozen into one single moment. Photography is directly connected to time as the camera shoots in fractions of a second. Time is always slipping and fracturing from the present, past and future. We are often living in all these levels at once. But when we’re not, we experience flow—or an absence of time. Multiple exposures are close to the experience of “flow.” When I look at a moment in time I “feel” more than can be recorded with a simple click of the shutter. I use multiple exposures on film to record a more accurate picture of how we can recall time transpiring. I sometimes think of my work like x-rays or ghost images of the land under the surface that is unsettled, under threat yet is also so very beautiful, magical and enigmatic and that the colored panels are to show these transitions of feelings, perceptions and of time passing and in the landscape itself moment by moment.

The idea of capturing “visual cacophony” seems central to your work. How do you decide what elements to layer in a single frame?

I edit and play with my negative scans and I know visually when the work is done. There are series of works that are edited and created fast and other times its slower or I pass on working in certain negatives. I’ve been doing this for over thirty years and it’s a visual intuitive process when editing and playing with my negatives. Urban and natural environments are both present in your series. How do you approach these different settings when capturing images, and what do they symbolize in your work?

I’ve lived in urban areas for most of my life and I seek nature in these city environments as I love both. I don’t see them as being that different really and I approach both urban and natural environments the same which is to try to see them fully in all their beauty, changes and chaos and to attempt to capture the feeling, essence and energy of the place in a photograph.

Your images evoke a sense of both beauty and fragility. How do you balance these qualities in your compositions?

To me both beauty and fragility are strength and love and are in harmony with each other. It takes strength to show fragility and for beauty to keep existing as it’s under constant assault on many fronts from climate change and disaster, war and politics, ignorance and unkindness. Beauty keeps us alive and it’s life sustenance itself and sometimes it’s seen as insubstantial yet it’s the opposite as we can’t live without beauty. I once gave a presentation on being an artist to my son’s class where one of the students asked me why art is important. This began a discussion of what if all the arts just disappeared for a day and everything was just blank and grey. Without beauty and all the arts what a bleak and harsh world we would occupy.

How has your understanding of time and impermanence evolved throughout the “Transitory Space” series?

As I age, I see time as fleeting and impermanence as part of everyday life. I hope to live to a very old age and I aim to capture and understand via photography the landscape I inhabit in all its beauty, chaos, flux, fragility, randomness and its magic and light.

Interviewed by Anna Gvozdeva of Visual Arts Magazine, 2024

New Works 2025

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

The Transitory Space series deals with urban and natural locations that are transforming due to the passage of time, altered natural conditions and a continual human imprint. In everyone and in everything there are daily changes and this series articulates fluctuation in the photographic image and captures movement through time and space. Transitory spaces have a messy human energy that is perpetually in the present yet continually altering. They are endlessly interesting, alive places where there is a great deal of beauty and fragility. They are temporary monuments to the ephemeral nature of existence.

Humans leave traces and artifacts of our consciousness everywhere in our environment. Contradictory realities can be found co-existing wherever we look. They’re in what we choose to think; what we choose to believe; and, how we choose to act. And, they can be found in what we choose to observe. When I look back on a moment it’s full of impressions and multiple exposures capture this. I make multiple exposures on specific frames in camera which allows me to display a more complete correlation of experiences that a single exposure just misses. Every moment captured on film is over as soon as the shutter clicks, recording the ephemeral. Yet, in reality, there is always a visual cacophony of experience. We are always living in many realities at once. Multiple exposures express the way we experience the world more accurately. Time is layered and not frozen into one single moment. Photography is directly connected to time as the camera shoots in fractions of a second. Time is always slipping and fracturing from the present, past and future. We are often living in all these levels at once. But when we’re not, we experience flow—or an absence of time. Multiple exposures are close to the experience of “flow.” When I look at a moment in time I “feel” more than can be recorded with a simple click of the shutter. I use multiple exposures on film to record a more accurate picture of how we can recall time transpiring.

Education:

B.F.A. Rhode Island School of Design, Rhode Island
M.F.A. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois
Fulbright Fellowship @ Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland

Solo Shows in the NYC area:

Susan Eley Fine Arts, NYC
Arsenal Gallery @ Central Park, NYC
Center for Book Arts, NYC
Sarah Nightingale Gallery, Water Mill, NY
Henry Street Settlement, NYC
A Taste of Art Gallery, NYC
A4L Gallery, NYC
AIR Gallery, NYC

Solo Shows Nationally and Internationally:

Black Cat Artspace, Toronto
Real Art Ways, Connecticut
Tomasulo Gallery @ Union College, New Jersey
Sol Mednick Gallery @ The University of the Arts, Philadelphia
Woman Made Gallery, Chicago
Artemisia Gallery, Chicago
Anchor Graphics, Illinois
Galleria Joella, Finland

Groups shows in the NYC Area:

Open Source Gallery, Brooklyn
Edward Hopper House, Nyack, NY
Associated Gallery, Brooklyn
Wave Hill, The Bronx
Flux Factory, Queens
Elizabeth Heskin Contemporary, NYC
Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn
Rush Art Gallery, NYC
The Fisher Art Gallery at Bard College
Denise Bibro Gallery, NYC
Momenta Art, Brooklyn
Nurture Art, Brooklyn
Metaphor Contemporary Art, Brooklyn
440 Gallery, Brooklyn
Chashama, NYC
Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY
WAH Center, Brooklyn
Westbeth Gallery, NYC
International Print Center, NYC
PS122, NYC

Group Shows Nationally and Internationally:

Gallery 1313, Toronto
Gladstone Hotel, Toronto
John. Aird Gallery, Toronto
Propeller Gallery, Toronto
Connections Gallery, Toronto
Artscape Wychwood Barns Community Gallery, Toronto
Arta Gallery, Toronto
The Papermill Gallery, Toronto
Gallery Aferro, New Jersey
City Without Walls, New Jersey
Sohn FIne Art Gallery, Massachusetts
Gallery 2014, Florida
Diane Kidd Gallery @ Tiffin University, Ohio
Kiernan Gallery, Oregon
23 Sandy Gallery, Oregon
Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, Florida
Bridgeport Art Center, Chicago
Susan Hensel Gallery, Minnesota
Worcester State College Art Gallery, Massachusetts
Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Delaware
C. Emerson Fine Art, Florida
Gwen Frostic Gallery, Michigan
Mad Art Space, Missouri
One Eye Gallery, Scotland
Wexford Art Centre, Ireland
Temporary Services @ Harold Washington Library, Illinois
Artemisia Gallery, Illinois

Museum Group Shows Nationally and Internationally:

Housatonic Museum, Connecticut
Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona
RISD Art Museum, Rhode Island
Turku City Art Museum, Finland
The King St. Stephen Museum, Szekesfehervar, Hungary
Florida State University Museum, Florida
Rockford Art Museum, Illinois
Royal Scottish Academy, Scotland

Arts Fairs in NYC and Nationally:

Scope Art Fair NYC 2011, 2010, 2009
Aqua Art Fair Miami 2010
Affordable Art Fair NYC 2010
Pool Art Fair Miami and NYC, 2008, 2009
Bridge Art Fair Miami, 2008, 2009
Photo NY 2006
Boomerang Art Fair Miami 2006
AAF Contemporary Art Fair NYC 2005 & 2004

Museum and Public Artists' Book Collections:

MoMA, New York
Harvard University Library, Massachusetts
Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
Wesleyan University, Connecticut
Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Washington, DC
Centre des Livres d’Artistes, France
Boekie Woekie, The Netherlands
Francis Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
The Tate Museum, England
The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York
The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
The Victoria and Albert, England
The New York Public Library, New York
Dartmouth College, Maine
Rhode Island School of Design, Rhode Island
The British Library, England
Chelsea College of Art and Design, England
Cleveland Institute of Art, Ohio
Carnegie-Mellon University, Pennsylvania
U.C.L.A. Art Library, California
Yale University, Connecticut
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC

Local and National Press:

Artvoices Magazine
The Hand Magazine
Focus Photography Magazine
Vasa Journal on Images and Culture
New Jersey Star Ledger
Tribeca Tribune
City Week NYC
Phaidon Club
New Jersey Westfield Leader
NY Arts Magazine
Edge Boston
Front Magazine, Canada
Diffusion Magazine
Daily Constitutional
Studio Views
Drain Online Magazine
Animal Online
Riverdale Press
Umbrella Magazine
Chicago Reader

Awards:

Irreversible Magazine, Selected Photographer, Show and Publication, Miami, Florida
Independent Project Grant, Artist Space, NYC
Community Art Assistant Grants, 1998 & 1999, Department of Cultural Affairs, Chicago, Illinois
Trustee Scholarship, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois
Fulbright Fellowship, Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland
Andrew Grant Bequest, Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland
Rhode Island School of Design, Independent Study Program, Rome, Italy
Full Tuition Scholarship for Undergraduate Study at Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island

Residencies:

NY Arts China Residency, Invited Residency, Beijing, China
Ragdale Foundation Lake Forest, Illinois, Fellowship Award
Pouch Cove Foundation, Pouch Cove, Newfoundland, Canada
Taipei International Artists Village, Taipei, Taiwan, Fellowship Award
Caldera Foundation, Sisters, Oregon, Fellowship Award
Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont, Fellowship Award