Sari Goodfriend
Sari Goodfriend was born and raised in New York City by parents who are art dealers. Not surprisingly, she graduated with a degree in Art History from Smith College. She spent one year as an intern at the Art Institute of Chicago and then changed direction to become a photographer. She studied at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography, then returned East to Connecticut, where she freelanced for several local newspapers while exhibiting her personal work in group shows in Litchfield County and New York City. She later worked as an assistant to several commercial photographers in New York and went out on her own in 2003, simultaneously balancing commercial and artistic projects.
About Familiar Terrain Series
I began this series by innocently taking a walk in the woods. I hadn’t intentionally set out to explore the ages old theme of man and nature, but I ended up discovering for myself a new perspective.
Much attention has been given (and rightly so) to the encroachment of human habitat on natural space. Less often mentioned, however, is the similarity between the two worlds. In this particular landscape, which had seen the wrath of a tornado almost two decades earlier, I found sympathetic souls. The interactions of tree bodies seemed to echo different levels of human dynamics, revealing everything from familial support to bitter brawls to passionate sensuality. Partially disturbed, partially comforted, I connected with the trees, as we merged from “other” to “self”.
The title used for each work – the word “Landscape” with a 4 digit number – stems from two sources. The first part was inspired by Simon Schama’s book “Landscape and Memory” in which landscapes represent a personal history due to one’s particular associations with that region. The number in each title is the randomly assigned number from the digital camera, a reflection of our man-made world as it interacts with nature.