Hannah Toepp
Hannah Toepp is a second-year Master of Fine Arts student at Indiana University Bloomington. She received her Bachelor's of Fine Arts from Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN. She creates her own pinhole cameras and uses them as a fidget to calm down when she is anxious. The resulting images she creates become abstractions of her surroundings and a recording of the act of calming down. She loves surprise and experimentation in her work and creates film soup to compare the effects of what she interacts with has on her body as reflected on the film. If you see her, you should ask if she has a pinhole camera in her pocket.
I work with experimental analog photography processes such as pinhole and chemigram. These images showcased are chemigrams, which are black and white darkroom paper that has been exposed to light and then I play with the traditional darkroom process to create these images. When the light-sensitive paper has been exposed to light, it changes colors. In creating chemigrams, materials other than photographic chemicals can be used. I use shaving cream as a main ingredient to create with. These are abstractions and I work with the process to make something that suggests otherworldliness.