Photographer Susan Bowen is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of these images. From the project ‘Neon and Billboards Holgaramas’. To see Susan’s body of work, click on any photograph.

Chance has played a role in all my photography, and I am most inspired by life in the city. The urban experience to me is largely about motion. The intense pace and vitality of the city is exciting to me; I like to shoot fast and furiously, to be totally immersed and to be swept up in, and along with, the tide of the moment. Either I am shooting people that are in motion or I myself am in movement around my subject. I will stalk my subjects, be they a swarm of gesturing humans or abstract shapes of color and light.

This series focuses on neon signs and billboards. It began when I visited Las Vegas to shoot for a proposal for a public art project. These first two images were shot on historic Fremont Street in the downtown, more classic, area of that city. Being pleased with those results, after returning to New York, I tried to carry on the same theme by shooting images in Times Square. All were shot at dusk to emphasize the glowing signs and express a sense of action.

These photographs were shot using a plastic film camera. The long overlapping images are created by only partially advancing the film between exposures – the overlapping occurs in the film itself. It always delights me how these mostly unplanned juxtapositions capture my experience of a particular time and place and at the same time have an identity all their own.

Susan Bowen lives in New York City and is historically known for her overlapping multiple exposure panoramas, which she shot with a plastic camera.  In 2008 Susan completed a 48’ public art mural for a school in New Haven, Connecticut, and the previous year she created four murals for the Department of Transportation in Minnesota.  In 2007 she was profiled in Photo Techniques and Light Leaks magazines, published in Light and Lens: Photography in the Digital Age, and received an award in the Pilsner Urquell International  Lucie Awards.  In 2006 and 2010 Susan had four images published in Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity, a book by Michelle Bates.  Her 23 solo shows have been in New York, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, Reno, Dayton, San Marino, Lubbock, Georgia, and Tennessee.  Susan's more recent projects include a series on people walking and explorations of objects, spills, and other ephemeral things she finds on the street.

All images and text © Susan Bowen