Landscape nominee

Bryce Canyon National Park is a hostile environment peppered with stark trees clinging on and in-between sharp jagged rocks. Engulfed by a harsh landscape where red sands rise to meet a hazy red sky, it is easy to marvel at the way life seems to find a way to cling onto the cliff of reality despite nature’s darkest intentions. At times, I too feel like I am hanging on for my life as I navigate through the demands society weighs upon women’s shoulders. With household expectations to cook, clean, take care of the children, and somehow still earn a living, I too must persevere and find my foothold between a rock and a hard place.

Cathy Immordino is a Los Angeles-based photographer, whose layered images form composites of personal experience and public spaces. Drawing on techniques and methods from fine art and photojournalism, Immordino’s optical layering serves as an evocative visual allegory for the complex narratives of life and memory. Immordino began her photography career after years of being a film actress, a set of experiences whose highs and lows she documented, along with architectural and urban landscape photographs of Hollywood at night. In subsequent projects and series, including a major endeavor based on her own ancestry and the history of immigration in her immediate family, she has continued to refine and evolve this fundamental structure. Layering her own stories and observations against backdrops of iconic architecture, landscapes, and public spaces where they unfolded. In this way she collapses both time and space in a surreal but familiar language composed of art history, biographical reportage, and photographic technology. Immordino has exhibited her work in galleries and institutions across the United States, co-founded the Shed Collective. She is associated with MOPLA, the LA Center for Photography, the Los Angeles Art Association, Center Santa Fe, and the Society of Photographic Educators.