Your name
Diane Meyer
Place of birth
New Jersey, USA
Place where you live now
Los Angeles, CA, USA
3 words to describe you
curious, empathetic, solivagant
Why do you take pictures?
Taking pictures is a way for me to see things differently and try to better understand the world around me. Given that a camera changes your role in a space from participant to observer, it allows you to see things in a new way. I also take photographs so that I can remember certain moments or events.
Where do you get your inspiration?
Probably the single most important source of inspiration is travel. I love exploring new cities and new places
Who are your influences?
I am very inspired by textile design in general. I love going to decorative arts museums and looking at wallpaper and carpet design. Artists and photographers who have inspired me, although generally not visually evident in my work, include Fischli and Weiss, Urs Fischer, Sophie Calle, Maurizio Cattelon, Christian Marclay, Thomas Demand, Tim Davis, and Gerhard Richter.
What determines the subject matter you choose?
My work has long been defined by explorations into the physical, social and psychological qualities that characterize place. These investigations have taken various forms throughout my career. Just as different locations have unique defining features, my approach to creating work changes in response to my explorations of each place and the conceptual framework of my underlying ideas. In this way, my work is generally experimental in nature as I am interested in using materials in new and intuitive ways. This reliance on experimentation has led me to produce a wide range of projects exploring the notion of place including an installation based around the notion of the American West as an invented, mythological space; a large scale oral history project focusing on transportation issues in Los Angeles; several site-specific public installations in various cities related to local histories; and, most recently, a series of photographs exploring the traces of history and memory in the landscape of present day Berlin.
What impact would you like your art to have?
We are living in such a media saturated world with so many images competing for our attention. I guess I would like for people to see my work and stop for a minute to spend time with it rather than scrolling or walking past.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
I used to teach in a summer study abroad program in Florence. I loved seeing the Renaissance work that was in situ in the original location it was designed for, the experiential aspect of physically being in the space, and to see how the architecture or light interacts with the paintings.
Is there anything you want to add?
My series of embroidered photographs following the path of the Berlin Wall will be on view at the Mitte Museum in Berlin this Fall in conjunction with the 35th Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall.

Reunion
Project statement

I have been working on an on-going series of hand-embroidered photographs based on found elementary school class pictures from the 1970s. In the class photographs, the faces of the students, or what would normally be the main focal points of the image, are
obscured with cross-stitch embroidery made to resemble the digital pixel structure of the image and sewn directly into the photograph. By obscuring what would typically be the most important parts of the image, otherwise overlooked details are brought into focus such as body language and other embodiments of social conventions. I am interested in exploring these details to reveal not only the relationships between the various figures, but also how, even at a very young age, children were taught and instructed to pose in particular ways, often based on gender. I am interested in this time period not only because it is my own generation, but because it is the last generation to have a childhood unclouded by digital technology. These class pictures were taken before camera phones and digital cameras and at a time when having one’s class picture taken was a more formal occasion-something that has been lost due to the ubiquitous nature of digital photography-making participants more conscious of the photograph as an aspirational vehicle for impression management. The class photos are from big cities and small towns throughout the United States but, despite their varied locations, the poses of children and teachers, classroom decorations, and clothing are strikingly similar providing a glimpse into the zeitgeist of the this generation and a view into education systems of the time.

diane meyer
@dianemeyerstudio