Linda Hacker, Urban Constructions

“Urban Constructions” are places of my own making to help me better understand and express how I absorb and inhabit my city life. I have lived in Brooklyn for 25 years and it is in city spaces that I most fully realize myself. In them, unencumbered by expectations and judgements, I find both safety and possibility. These images begin with the construction of a paper collage of a cityscape from my imagination. The collages provide a basic starting point for me to use photography and digital alteration to create something new. I photograph each collage multiple times using a variety of techniques including multiple and long exposures. I then blend and modify these photos in Photoshop to create something previously unseen, an aspect of my experience of urban spaces merged with recollection and imagination — each one unique. These photographs don’t seek to evoke the physical space but rather use color, form, texture, and layers to explore its energy and emotion — the possibilities inherent in the urban landscape.