Amber Valentine's unique 35mm photography is a mixture of traditional film and darkroom techniques, vintage Lomography (lo-fi photography usually using a plastic camera), and experimental ideas of little renown or of her own design. Her work fuses incidental imagery into a singular complex and saturate image, often with infinite depth.
Often her works contain multiple exposures shot using multiple cameras, Each of Amber's photographs can contain up to four different images, shot on different days in different lighting, and sometimes even different states. The results are often breathtaking and always unpredictable. These images are traditionally "quadruple exposed". She rolls back her film by hand, switching it between her Fisheye, Canon AE-1, and 1979 Super KS.
A creature of change by design, in January of 2015, Valentine began experimenting with extreme dyes on her films, with stunning results. While she has used everything from coffee to vegetable based hair dyes to bleach, her favorite dyes are her own venal blood and baking soda.
In recent months, she has embraced abstract photography, utilizing heavy heat and light effects in addition to dyes to create obelisk like shapes, box like stains and more that captivate the eye and force the viewer to spend time with the piece, as one would an abstract painting. Valentine is more of an "experimenter" than a traditional "photographer" and spends a lot of her time researching near-forgotten analog processes.
Residing in suburban Detroit, Amber is completely self taught. Though she has a background in fine arts, she only considered photography a hobby until the owner of the art gallery she worked at saw her multiple exposure images and pushed her to pursue her photography as a career. She is a regular contributor to Lomography.com with her continuing article Pushing Boundaries, which documents her analog experiments one roll at a time, detailing her technique.
Amber's work has shown at The Northville Gallery (Northville, Michigan), Gallery 194 (Lapeer, Michigan), The Lawrence Street Gallery (Ferndale, Michigan), and others. She was named the first Emerging Artist of 2015 by Gallery 194 and has been called an "artist to watch". In June of 2015, she had her first out of state show at Toledo, Ohio's Le So Gallery. She has since shown in Washington's Radar Station Gallery and has upcoming events in Europe.
Amber is also an active member of the arts community, having worked with non profits when she lived in Nashville and currently working the Northville Art House, volunteering often and teaching a number of children's art classes, including creative analog photography.
Currently, her work is available for purchase at The Northville Gallery or by inquiry to amberaudravalentine@gmail.com.
Amber's work can also be seen on the cover of her albums Skin & Bones, Glass Slipper, and Black Thumb. She has also shot Detroit band The Hand in The Ocean for promotional material.
Amber is also a noted collage artist, using old National Geographics, back issues of Vogue, and thrift store kid’s books to create stunning and surreal images. These collages are all pieced together by hand, out of meticulously cut pieces, and glued down. Sometimes, these collages are humorous. Other times, they are beautiful. Often, they force the viewer to think about their own standards of beauty. A full collection can be viewed online.
