Floating World

Kym Kulp’s first solo photgraphy exhibit at the Peddie School’s Mariboe Gallery aims to achieve a dreamlike mood, transporting viewers to an other-wordly realm.

By: Jillian Kalonick

"You’ll feel you’re taken to this place and time, in this piece it’s going to be afterlife, or associations with afterlife that people have," says Kym Kulp of her show at the Peddie School Jan. 9-30, which utilizes lightboxes to highlight images such as a cibachrome print of a snow cloud (above) and a series of images about the eye (below).

   As a photographer fascinated with underwater images, Kym Kulp brought her camera not to ocean or lake waters, but to recreation centers and community pools, where she was met with mixed responses.
   "I would go around and record activities of people from neck down, people’s bodies underwater," says Ms. Kulp. "If you don’t shoot people’s faces, if there’s no discriminating features, you don’t need to get a release. The reaction I got from parents and children were loaded — the connotation of someone swimming around, taking photos underwater, added an interesting dynamic."
   When she brought a male friend along to take photos, Ms. Kulp says, the results were much different. "If he had the camera, they would lift the kids out of the water. There’s an implicit trust in a woman that wasn’t there for a man. The interactions I had with children were different."
   The resulting images, of random floating bodies, suggested to Ms. Kulp an entrance into a dream world, one in between the conscious and subconscious.

   "I was trying to be anonymous, but it wasn’t about me," says Ms. Kulp "It was about using the veil of water as metaphor for the psyche and subterranean, the things we suppress."
   Ms. Kulp, who teaches photography at the Peddie School, will present her first solo show at the school’s Mariboe Gallery beginning Jan. 9. The show aims for a mood similar to those underwater images, a transformation to an other-worldly realm.
   "You’ll feel you’re taken to this place and time, in this piece it’s going to be afterlife, or associations with afterlife that people have," says Ms. Kulp of the show, which utilizes lightboxes to highlight images. "It’s light-filled, white, with images of clouds or associations of clouds… I’ve manipulated snow and fabric and things that feel very light. I’m hoping the viewer goes into room and they’re struck by light — (like) being under bright lights of a hospital, or as though they’ve gone through a porthole or to another world."
   Her image "Fly," which will hover above illuminated boxes, leads the viewer literally on the heels of a floating or swimming figure. "Hand at Eyes," one in a series of four, focuses on a shiny detached eyeball.
   Inspired by "The Story of the Eye," a 1928 short story by French philosophical theorist and surrealist writer Georges Bataille, Ms. Kulp tracked down a butcher who sold bulls’ eyes.
   "I took a series of photographs, mostly underwater, playing with them and seeing what they would do," she says. "It was very odd… I’m a vegetarian."
   In the story by Mr. Bataille, whose work was considered obscene and banned in the United States for a time, a girl attends a bullfight and, following the slaughter, catches the bulls’ eyes and places them within her.
   "What I love about the story," says Ms. Kulp, "is that it’s very heavily laden with symbols… One in particular that jumped out at me is the eyeball and egg, how these orbs are identifiers for transformation, sources of leaving what we know as human and corpuscular, what we know as tangible, close to what we are in essence."
   As a women’s studies minor in college, Ms. Kulp did a lot of reading about gender stereotyping and Freudian ideas. "Suddenly (symbols) were jumping out at me everywhere," she says. "I felt like the eyes have so many connotations about sight and losing your sight. (The girl in the story) wanted to achieve wisdom and knowledge."
   A native of Philadelphia, Ms. Kulp graduated from Tyler School of Art in Elkins Park, Pa., with a degree in sculpture. After joining an artists’ cooperative in San Francisco and participating in group exhibitions, she earned a master’s degree from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, and also earned certification as a yoga teacher from the Soma Center in Highland Park.
   Teaching photography has made Ms. Kulp reevaluate approaches to her art, she says.
   "At the college level, a lot of things were implicit. (The students) challenge me to not take things for granted… they actually beg the questions that I should be asking myself. I’ve been revisiting things, some simple questions like ‘Why is that art?’ It’s been good for me that way, getting back to basic truths."
An exhibition of the recent work of Kym Kulp is on view at the Mariboe Gallery, Swig Arts Center, the Peddie School, South Main Street, Hightstown, Jan. 9-30. Opening reception/gallery talk: Jan. 9, 6:30 to 9 p.m. Gallery hours: Mon.-Fri. 9 a.m.-3 p.m. For information, call (609) 490-7550. On the Web: www.peddie.org/capps