Creators of photographic and digital images including fine art and commercial photography.
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Bobbie is an accomplished painter and portrait artist who has applied her talents to her fine art photography for over 25 years. She states: "A common thread runs through all my work- an intense fascination with the use of ones own body as a canvas for self expression. My art work is usually figurative, and this emphasis reflects my intense interest in people and their creative nature. I feel that this creativity emerges though the manner in which one choose to dress his personal canvas - the body. These choices may camouflage who this person is or what he or she is all about, but more often, the choice can be quite revealing, both consciously and unconsciously. It is this creative nature that I wish to document."
Her photography has always been on the edge of the mainstream. In the Mid seventies she developed a new alternative photo process by breaking a few rules. Using chemicals meant for fabric, she applied to rag drawing paper, then after the image was developed she drew and painted on the surface with a variety of media. Her technique and work has been published in the book, Artistic Photo Processes by Suda House, published in 1979.
Currently, she uses a computer to enhance her photo images. Recently she and Rick Van Dyke, won the Graphis Photo contest for 1997. This is an international contest and the winners are showcased in their annual book, Graphis Photo 97, published in October 1997.
Bobbie has spent the last 15 years documenting the underground: goths, vampiric personas, and punk rockers. She has literally thousands of images of which only a few are chosen to be created as artwork. One of the more well known vamp personalities recently photographed by her was Elvira in May 1999. These images are some of the only images of Elvira created as fine art.
Statement by Bobbie Kitchens 1998
I choose to document the underground: Goths, vampires, societies punks, artists, and various other eccentric individuals, because I personally find these people are much more interesting visually and more apt to utilize their body as a canvas. That is where art truly begins for me. Since the Mid 80's I've hung out at the local punk and new wave clubs documenting the many different ways these people would color and arrange their hair. I stumbled on a few Goths who proclaimed to be vampires and from that point on you could say I was bitten by my fascination. At that point the documentary took on a new direction. Determined to document the vampire scene, I searched through goth clubs and documented this gothic phenomenon for the next 15 years. It is well documented at this point. The look of the Vampire has had this same undying beauty in a mixture of victorian lace, fish net and vinyl. The dark beauty and the mystical as well as androgynous have been a strong visual part of the sensual attraction and glamour of the gothic scene. I'm more focused at this point on simply creating that pure Gothic Glamour.
