Introduction

The Visual Studies Workshop was a place for the photographer who was looking for a new creative way of making photographs. Photography in the 1970s was about breaking the rules of the f/64 and the formalist generations. Photographers started to alter their images by using multiple printing techniques. The movement that started in Rochester attracted Diana Crane Citret, who was interested in manipulating the image after it was taken. She found freedom in the rooms at the workshop and support from professors John Wood and Joan Lyons.

Citret attempted to understand the idea of what a whole portrait of a person could be. The portraits in this collection may appear innocent at first glance, however Citret has manipulated parts of the image to add depth and meaning to these non-traditional portraits. What is intriguing is that Citret unknowingly has also created a portrait of herself through the way she has chosen to manipulate the image. The narratives created in the images reflect her relation to the sitter and the photograph. Citret has successfully rephrased her question of what a portrait could be, which allows us to explore and attempt to recreate the story of Citret and her sitters.

Citret worked almost entirely in haloid Xerography, choosing to forego the traditional silver based process. The haloid Xerographic medium’s photographic quality and printmaking application was inspiring to Citret. Citret, along with contemporaries using the haloid Xerographic process such as Joan Lyons, were able to push the medium of photography to a higher level of expressionist art. We can draw parallels from Citret’s work to our current digital photographic movement, which is currently challenging our understanding of photography. We are faced, like Citret, with a new and exciting way of thinking about photography.

-Jaimee S. Lindvay