LJ Evans
Photography
LJ Evans has been a resident of Alaska since 1986. She lives in Ester, an old mining town outside Fairbanks. She holds an MFA in Photography from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, M.Ed. in Educational Technology from Arizona State University and a B.S. in Psychology from Sacred Heart University in Bridgeport, Conn.
Evans' work has received awards in juried exhibitions in Alaska including Rarefied Light, Alaska Positive and 64th Parallel, and included in several solo and group exhibits in the state. Her images are included in several private collections in Alaska and Outside.
I have been making photographs since I was about 11 years old, when my parents gave me a Kodak Brownie Holiday camera for Christmas. I still have that camera.
I first connected in earnest with fine art photography at Photo Graphics Workshop, a teaching space and gallery in New Canaan, Conn., in 1979. I have primarily made my living as a writer and editor, but a passion for photography has been an important part of my self-identity ever since. For a number of years, I created classic analog black and white darkroom prints and I am still profoundly drawn to the simplicity of monochrome imagery. It wasn’t until I started experimenting with Polaroid materials in the 1990s that I began to produce a significant amount of work in color.
Botanicals, the exhibit I staged in 2022 in partial completion of a Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, resulted from more experiments with alternative photographic methods and is so far my deepest dive into vivid color.
The images I am making now weave together 40 years of experience making photographs using film and paper with the freshness, flexibility and immediacy of the tools, software and printing possibilities of digital technology.
