Where Shadows Cease- Photography from Susan Burnstine

The Mississippi State University Department of Art Galleries through the Contact Photo Series is pleased to present Where Shadows Cease, work by California-based photographer Susan Burnstine. 

Featuring 22 individual pieces, the exhibition will travel the viewer around the United States from densely populated Brooklyn New York to wild, remote coastal California.  

Burnstine will give a virtual artist talk via WebEx at 5pm on Monday, October 21st in the Depot Gallery.  The gallery reception will be that evening from 5-6pm.

Where Shadows Cease: Resonance of America's Dream



While the road trip maintains a deep-rooted cultural value in the nation’s story, it is foundational to my personal narrative. Growing up in Chicago the grandchild of immigrants who came to the country with nothing and found success, my family personified the American Dream. I was raised in the embrace of that dream. Our annual summer road trips visiting iconic cities, national monuments and parks fostered immense pride in our land, and those memories endure to this day. As benefactors of the postwar automobile generation, my parents were near fanatical about traversing every inch of 41,000 miles of pavement laid for their benefit in the 1950s. These highways and byways offered a gateway to freedom, adventure, discovery and an intimate connection promised by every iconic landscape and landmark they happened upon. In hindsight, this enthusiasm might seem naive, but those summer excursions deepened my family’s belief that, as citizens of this country, we were part of something greater than ourselves. I wholeheartedly embraced those beliefs. Whether captivated by the dark beauty of The Badlands or the rich history of Gettysburg, each location stirred within me a sense of shared experience, bound by history, heritage, and hope of the past, present, and future, transcending individual desires and united us as Americans. My family disintegrated early in my adult life when my mother was killed and the loss was magnified by my father's tragic death shortly thereafter. My foundational family unit was gone, and in its absence and isolation, I began searching for what unifies. I am inspired to explore and reconnect with this nation's beauty and essence by revisiting the places of my youth. In the context of this distracted, social-media driven, divided and divisive era, I seek what universally connect us as Americans, imperfections and all. In this work, I've revisited iconic locations and landscapes across the United States, retracing the memorable road trips of my youth. In my travels, I delve into the heart of this land using visual metaphor and symbolism to reveal hidden connections within our nations’ collective memory. By seamlessly incorporating universal themes and symbols found in landscapes and cultural sites, I illuminate how these elements embody the enduring spirit and ethos of this country. As this series explores this nation’s rich history and our collective mark on it, it stimulates discourse and offers fresh perspectives on our past, present, and future, united by a reflection of our dreams—American dreams.

About the Artist:

Susan Burnstine is one of the few photographers today avidly pursuing alternative processes to create an idiosyncratic and deeply personal visual landscape. Initially, Burnstine sought to find a way to portray her dream-like visions entirely in-camera, rather than with post-processing digital manipulations. To achieve this, she has created twenty-one handmade film cameras and lenses that are frequently unpredictable and technically challenging. The cameras are primarily made out of plastic, vintage camera parts, and random household objects, with single-element lenses molded from plastic and rubber. Learning to overcome their extensive optical limitations required Burnstine to rely on instinct and intuition--the same tools that are key when attempting to interpret dreams.

The Depot Art Gallery is open 9am to 5pm Monday through Friday in the Cullis Wade Depot, 2nd floor above the Welcome Center. We are nextdoor to Barnes and Noble, but accessible through the store.