Heather Schmaedeke is an internationally exhibited artist, who recently moved to Washington DC after living in Berlin, Germany for 3.5 years, where she participated in an artist residency program. In 2015 she won 2nd place in the 24-hour category of the Fotomarathon Berlin. She is currently an artist in residence at Palette 22 and has been included in two group shows, one in DC and one in Budapest. Heather’s work has been published in two books and featured on countless websites including; Certain Circuits Magazine, Project Mixed Media, Fast Art News and the Berliner Fenster. Additionally, her photographs have appeared in articles that she has written for Artconnect Berlin, True Berlin and he Nonsense Society. The overarching theme in her artwork is the narrative.

The transformation of a place from concrete to ephemeral, the elements that elevate a scene from everyday to extraordinary; these are the images that comprise the work in this portfolio. The photographs are pieces of a story that compel viewer participation. Just as each of us writes the stories of our lives everyday, the viewer is invited to create a narrative of the image, organizing the information, filling in the before and after.

The combination of movement and stillness makes for a dynamic image, which picks up in the middle of a scene. Like our lives, the photographs are pieces of a story, they are not the whole story, but the fragments from which that story is built and grows. The scenes are hiding in the open on the streets. It is my story, your story, our collective story. These stories inform our lives, how we see each other, how we see ourselves and make sense of the world around us. Our stories write the story of our city, our country and our world everyday.

Transience and permanence, capturing the fleeting moments in this series lends them a sense of the permanent. While the environment has some of it’s permanence shaken loose. Just as the world around us is not as permanent as it seems, we too, are also not as ephemeral.

These images, these narratives give us pause to reflect on the nuances of this paradox. In this reflection, we realize that the seemingly contradictory opposites of’ concrete and ephemeral, kinetic and static, transient and permanent are not inviolable but permeable and fluid. The story is us and it is larger than us.