Kalliope Amorphous

Amorphous uses in-camera effects, modified lenses, mirrors, and handmade camera attachments. Her style, as she describes it, is conceptual photography with an emphasis on pictorialism and surrealism.[3] Acting as her own model, she explores the meaning of identity by assuming different roles.[4] Amorphous has stated that the "study of consciousness"[5] and the concept of duende[6] are primary influences in her work. She has also cited butoh as an influence.[7]

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Amorphous attended high school in Rehoboth, Massachusetts. Upon graduating, she moved to New York City, where she experimented with modeling, acting, and performance poetry. In a 2008 interview with art critic Brian Sherwin, she cited her early social involvement in the New York City theater and cabaret scenes as influences in her early photographic work.[8]

A self-taught photographer, Amorphous began working exclusively with self-portrait photography while living in Rhode Island in 2007. Her early self-portraits focused on character studies, costuming, and makeup.[5]

Amorphous' 2009 Resurrecting Ophelia series of self-portraits cast her as the fictional character Ophelia. Like much of her later work, the series relied on in-camera effect with Amorphous positioned behind glass, acrylic, and textiles.[9] The series was exhibited in Amorphous' hometown in a solo exhibition at the Community College of Rhode Island and appeared in print in the premier issues of Dark Beauty magazine[10] and The Omen Magazine.[11]

In 2011, Amorphous was named in GLAAD's annual Top 100 Artists.[1] She received honorable mention for the Julia Margaret Cameron Award in the category of street photography from The Worldwide Photography Gala Awards.[12]

Amorphous's recent projects use distortion mirror boards created with reflective material. In her series Glass Houses, she appears in a series of surreal and distorted self-portraits which look as if they were submerged in water.[13] Of the series, Lancia Trendvisions wrote: "The mirror is just a surface. Exactly like the photographs that portray it. They cannot depict what is hidden under their patina: the distortions of our fears, the destructuring push of our desires. But photographer Kalliope Amorphous searches for just that impalpable spirit."[14] In her distorted self-portraits, Amorphous explores what she calls "the fluid nature of identity".[15]

In addition to self-portraits, Amorphous began working with glitch art in 2013. In 2014, she completed a series of experimental photographs of performance artist Marina Abramović.[16] Amorphous appears opposite Matthew Avedon in the music video Savage Way to Live for the Brooklyn-based band Relations.[17]

In 2015, her short film Contrast And Time was included in the Forever Now Project exhibited at Mona Foma.[18] Forever Now was an international project in response to the Voyager records of 1977, and culminated in a golden record containing 44 artists.[19][20]

Since 2016, Amorphous has been documenting the people and landmarks in her neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City in a series of street photographs. She is one of few female street photographers working in the genre.[21][22][23][24]

During the 2016 Presidential election, Amorphous endorsed candidate Hillary Clinton and completed a series of fine art photographs of Clinton on the campaign trail.[25][26]

In 2019, a 3D Virtual Exhibition of some of her works from her series Glass Houses was published as part of the permanent exhibitions in the TOROSIETE Museum of Contemporary Art.[27]

Amorphous is the founder and perfumer behind the indie perfume house Black Baccara.[28][29] She founded the brand in 2010.[30] The house specializes in artisan perfume oils and Eau de Parfums [31] with themes similar to those Amorphous works with in her visual art.[32]

• Official website
• Kalliope Amorphous at AFK Gallery