Julia Campisi

The Kit

Click. A photographer takes a picture. There’s some editing, processing, decisions made, and then it’s published and in the world. Some photographs make a spark and then fade away, others stand the test of time and are seen by many, each look casting it’s own interpretation, creating a memory. Amass these photographs in the millions that we see in our lifetime and there you have an important and unique piece of your Identity Kit. Still imagery, moving imagery, conceptual and realist, digital and analogue. You could call it your own personal popular culture, each understanding of an image as unique as the myriad of your identity.

The Series

Julia Campisi’s collage series I Am Also You for The Public House of Art re-appropriates and distorts existing photography found in a Time Magazine book of collected photographs. By cutting and reshaping the material of the images, Campisi plans on creating a moment which may invoke a personal memory or a feeling, we’ve all been there before. No more are they iconic photographs that evoke a specific time, place and situation in the past but are now brought forth into a space where they are relevant and can even bring a rush of nostalgia to the viewer. I am also you and you are also me, through these distorted images and many like them we find ourselves connected.

The Bio

Julia Campisi is a photo based and collage artist born and bred in Toronto, Canada. She finished her BA in Political Science but felt like something was missing. At the time her roommates were art majors and she began to do their class assignments for fun. This then turned into a passion and two years after graduating from McMaster University she decided to go back to school and learn about photography. From the beginning of her interest in this medium she would take apart the elements of a photograph, which slowly started to move into collage work. Her desire to deconstruct existing images from the past comes from her need to understand the photograph as an object and photography’s relationship to our culture today.