“I've always liked the primitive superstition that
one can capture the soul on film. Photography is so much more than a mere
visual record. As an art form, it feels sometimes as if I've indeed drawn out
the soul of a subject and liberated it from feather or flesh and made it shine.
For me, photography is a communion of sorts, allowing an intimacy with form and
color, light and texture. I can get lost inside the world of the lens.”
Since she was a teenager, MaryJoy Martin
has been looking through the lens of a camera. She will tell you this is why
she's cross-eyed. Experimentation with lights and angles dominated her work in
the 35mm days. She photographed everything. Then photographed it again with
different light. Or if it would burn, she'd set it afire (the family has a
history of pyromania) and film it again.
A “serial
shutterbug” would be too mild a description for Martin's long-term passion
for cameras. Mostly Canon. She's tried a few others, but always returns to
Canon. She's a walking advert for Canon. As a youngster she had old secondhand
Canons that she would disassemble, clean, repair, and restore to working order.
She fancied herself as being “part camera” at times. Her affinity for
her Canon in the 1970s was beyond most of our understanding, for when she slid
off a cliff or fell into a river, she would first save her Canon before
anything else.
The reason she was sliding off cliffs with those cameras
lies in her desire to find that unusual angle for her shot. Oftentimes that
meant hanging off some limb over a gorge or balancing on a rock in the middle
of a torrent.
 “I had one 35mm Canon that had gone through swamp
and firestorm with me,” Martin says, “and couldn't part with it even
though I'd converted to digital. It was scarred and seared, suffered a few snow
slides, fell in a creek more than twice, and still had a beating heart. When I
finally gave it away, I felt as if I had lost a friend.”
Martin's
cameras go through a sort of christening ceremony, wherein she bestows a name
upon them, which might make one think she's infusing soul into inanimate
objects. Witchcraft? Madness? Yet once she bonds with a Canon, it becomes part
of her flesh and bone, if not part of her soul. And her work reflects that:
soul.
 Martin uses
both her full name and her professional art signature, “MerryJoy” on
her photographic work, depending on whether the work is for publication or for
gallery showing. Her photography has been featured in magazines and newspapers
since 1982, and as art pieces, hangs in private collections throughout the USA
and in the UK.
To view Martin's online photography galleries, click on
the thumbnails below. For inquiries to purchase her work or to arrange a
gallery showing, please contact Cameron & Associates.
|
EXALTATION OF BIRDS |
COLDBLOODED
FRIENDS |
CELEBRATION OF
FLORA |
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FURRED
FRIENDS |
SIX-LEGGED FRIENDS |
OTHERWORLDS |
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CELEBRATION OF
FACES |
LANDSCAPES |
CELEBRATION OF
FIRE |
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STILLNESS IN
LIFE |
TRANSIENT
LIGHT |
DREAMSCAPES |
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 To contact MaryJoy Martin
email either of the representatives below:
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