September 14 – October 10, 1984
Influenced by my girlfriend (now wife) Leslie Kippen, I began setting up these pseudo archeological sites in Blue Mountain Lake, NY and later in Rochester, NY in 1981. I also took a great deal from sculptor Charles Simonds’ series of Dwellings installed around New York City. I left street photography behind and had a new way to engage with picture making. I imagined the fictional environments had a possible, though never defined purpose for unknown inhabitants. The photographs are a record of the environments – usually a foot or two square – and were constructed without tools, using only found, natural elements. The constructions sometimes remained up to a year, and were often discovered by others who utilized them as a site for their own play. Decades later the prints (and now the jpgs on the screen) survive as an archeological element of their own.
All prints are Untitled, 4.5x 6 inches, gelatin silver photographs, gold and selenium toned.
Made from 1981-1984
Mauro Altamura earned a BA in Fine Art from Ramapo College of New Jersey. His MFA in Visual Arts from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY, was granted through SUNY, Buffalo. He has an MFA in Creative Writing awarded by Rutgers University, Newark. Altamura taught at several universities and institutions in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area, including the International Center of Photography. He was a visiting professor at John Cabot University, Rome, from 1990-1998. He taught at New Jersey City University from 1985-2017, where he was an Associate Professor.
Altamura received several fellowships, including a Distinguished Artist Fellowship, from NJSCA in Photography and fellowships from the NY State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He received a fellowship in Prose from the NJ State Council on the Arts in 2022. He’s been an artist-in-residence in programs funded by both the NJSCA and NYSCA as well as private institutions. His photographic work has been exhibited extensively nationally and internationally. He has published his fiction and non-fiction stories in Crimereads.com, Ovunquesiamo.com, Milkcandy review, Yolk Literary and Bull among other literary journals.