Anna Tomczak is an artist specializing in a range of alternative photographic processes. She is known for her large format Polaroid transfers of assemblages in the studio using animals, botanicals, found objects and iconic artifacts to present mythical anecdote. Her photographs are created in the studio where she assembles her "scenes." Each image is described in vibrant colors and assembled with found objects such as botanicals, memorabilia, and artifacts, as well as the human figure. In her own words, she explains, "Artifacts depict my personal experience through visual narrative and combine color, light and texture to welcome the interpretation of the viewer. I am interested in the impact of images combined together- textures, feathers, air bubbles, and butterflies, patterns of light and shadow."
Technique is central to her photography. She is one of very few masters of the Polaroid 20 x 24 inch view camera. For both the 20 x 24 and 8 x10, the process is the same, once the "scene" is assembled, she makes the exposure, then separates the image layers while they are still developing and delicately transfers the negative onto watercolor paper. Every print is unique, as each is transferred immediately after being photographed.
"Her photographs are beautiful, yet they are heavily layered with ideas, histories, remembrances and emotion. The artist
delves into hidden places in her psyche to resurrect and interpret what is captured there, using it to re-energize souvenirs
of past lives." Barbara Hitchcock, Exhibition Curator, Director of Cultural Affairs at the Polaroid Corporation
Tomczak earned her BA in Theater Arts-Film Studies from Pennsylvania State University and an MFA in Fine Art Photography from the University of Florida. This combination of theater, film and photography provided her the foundation for the development of dramatic imagery realized in her current work. Tomczak's photography has been featured in exhibitions at venues including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Southeast Museum of Photography, and the Norton Museum of Art, among others. Recently, her images were included in a traveling exhibition organized by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography titled The Polaroid Project, that traveled internationally to cities including Vienna and Berlin, and were also included in an exhibit at Fotonostra in Barcelona in October of 2019.
