Siuephotography

BFA Photography candidate Jadie Keck, will be showcasing a collection of her fine art and travel photography at the ArtEast 2025. Jadie’s work explores storytelling, mental health, and the sense of wonder found through exploration, capturing the quiet details that shape our experiences.

Join us in supporting Jadie and the many talented artists participating in this year’s event, and celebrate the vibrant creative community that continues to grow throughout our region.

Vandalia native and BFA candidate at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Jadie Keck invites you to experience Traveler, a photography exhibition showcasing images captured across the United States. Through moments of light, landscape, and life, Jadie’s work reflects discovery, beauty, and the spirit of adventure.

📍 414 W Gallatin St, Vandalia, Illinois
• Nov 14th | 4:30–8:00 PM
• Nov 15th | 10:00 AM–7:30 PM

Join us during Vandalia’s Olde Tyme Christmas to explore stories told through the lens, with prints available for purchase.

Installation in progress! Join us on Thursday for the opening of the Spring 2025 BFA exhibition featuring photo major .solly_

Congratulations to BFA student recipient of this year’s Orville Joyner scholarship!

Wrapped Up
2024
58”x 60”
Cyanotype Print on Fabric Quilt

Memory Work 2024
5”x7”
Van D**e Print

The Introduction to Digital Photography course students finished up their first portrait prints last week🤩

Students learned how to work with models and non-models, pose for fine art photographs, use lower apertures to create a blurred background, and edit for neutral white balance and skin tone on our inkjet printers.

The Research in Photography class had the opportunity to visit the print archives at the St. Louis Art Museum and see some original work! Thank you Eric Lutz for sharing many brilliant stories.

The Research in Photography class just finished their composite images!

Students worked together to conceptualize, plan and shoot the images used in their final composite prints.

Do you have a favorite? 👀

Alternative Processes student Jack Goetz experimented with toning cyanotypes using blueberries for his final project in the fall. The mix of blue and purple hues mimick the unsettling sight of bruises.

Jack’s artist statement:

The series of cyanotypes toned with blueberries, explores the hidden bruises of mental and psychological abuse. The natural pigment of the fruit creates a deep purple hue, symbolizing the bruises we carry, long after words and actions are finished. Cyanotypes are a process that relies on light to expose the image, but mental trauma can linger hidden in the mind, only to be revealed through time.
The use of blueberries was for the overwhelming color shifts in the image which served as a symbolic element. The natural stains from the process are unpredictable, much like mental abuse, it could be weak or overpowering, but always leaving a “bruise”. The vivid purple tones set a reminder of the invisible wounds we carry that can be profoundly impactful. The resulting images invite the viewer to enter a space where the boundary between insight and reality becomes blurred when the viewer can see and feel the mental weight of trauma.
Through this work, I hope to evoke an awareness of the silent battles many people face in today’s age. This work is a call to acknowledge the scars that don’t always show and give voice to experiences often silenced.

Alternative Process student Diana Tschomakoff’s ( )Van D**e Brown prints created for her final project in the fall 🍃

Van D**e Brown printing involves hand-coating a surface with ferric ammonium citrate, tartaric acid, and silver nitrate. When exposed to UV light, the chemicals turn a deep brown color. Placing a digital negative onto the paper, masks the image, resulting in a wide range of tones and fine details.

An excerpt from Diana’s artist statement:
With this series of images, I wanted to highlight key ideas and states of being that I experienced throughout my period of depression. While from a distance or upon first glance, the compositions may not immediately evoke sadness or negativity, regardless of the fact that their deeper meaning does. The vines serve as a metaphor for how often people in our immediate life may not recognize someone struggling because of how they are able to hide it. The reason I chose to represent this concept with the Van D**e process is not only for its brown hue and earthly tones that feel intrinsically connected to nature, but there is something about the way that the resulting images feel like they are hiding something. Apart from me physically cutting the edges of the frames, I don’t feel that they reveal the “full picture” or story. Without the influence of color interfering, the muted, faded, and dull textures create a feeling of darkness and lacking, which I also happen to find beautiful at the same time.

Come out to the Photo Club Welcome Meeting on Thursday, Feb. 27 at 3 p.m. in ADE2218 for free food, friends and photo sharing!

Feel free to bring some prints or a laptop to share your photos with everyone

📸:

The Research In Photography class doing a class photo shoot for composite imaging!

Check out some precious photos of Introduction to Photography student Savannah Millsap’s kitty, Honey!

The Introduction to Photo students worked on learning technical camera skills like shooting in Manual mode and framing subjects for this first assignment of the semester.