Christine Elfman: The Evasive Copy: Photography and Disappearance

Christine Elfman (B.F.A. '04) explores the constancy of change through photography, painting, and film. By making images out of their own disappearance, Elfman acknowledges the inseparability of permanence and fugitivity within pictorial representation. Her work offers a reminder that the harder one tries to capture an object, the more it evades the grasp.

From the Philadelphia area, Elfman received her B.F.A. in painting from Cornell University and M.F.A. in photography from California College of the Arts. She has worked extensively with early photographic processes and with historic collections at the George Eastman House, University of Rochester Rare Books Library, and the Berkeley Art Museum.  Elfman has been awarded the San Francisco Artist Award, the San Francisco Foundation Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship, the Center for Emerging Visual Artists Career Development Fellowship, and an artist residency at the Saltonstall Foundation. She has taught photography most recently at San Francisco Art Institute and is currently a visiting critic in the Department of Art at AAP. She is represented by Gallery Wendi Norris in San Francisco.