My photographic work explores the ecological world in relationship to climate grief, life and decomposition cycles, and wonder. I am interested in creating abstract typologies that respond specifically to time and place, and I use both lens-based and experimental cameraless processes in my work. I engage in place-specific collaborations with the environment by placing natural materials, such as plant matter, water from lakes, salt marshes and the ocean, and decaying wildlife on the surface of photographic film and paper. These materials, along with sunlight, precipitation and temperature, work to slowly and unpredictably erode, decay and alter the silver emulsion, which proves to be both fragile and resilient to these changes.
I am also interested cataloging time, place and experience through typological grids, utilizing cameraless photographic drawings and other methods. These works are in response to personal and political events, often reflecting my experience as a woman who inhabits a queer body in a changing landscape.
ARTIST BIO
Born in New Haven, CT, Mary Zompetti is a photographic artist living and working in Roanoke, VA. She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from the Lesley University College of Art and Design and a BFA in Visual Arts from Vermont State University. Her work has been exhibited for over 20 years both nationally and internationally, including at the Vermont Center for Photography, the Photographic Resource Center, the A.I.R. Gallery, the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, the Griffin Museum of Photography, and the Mjólkurbúðin Gallery in Akureyri, Iceland. She has attended artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Gil Residency in Akureyri, Iceland.
Her photographs have been published in several books and magazines, including The Sun Magazine and in a recent volume from Another Earth Press, What Makes a Lake – Tracing Movement, featuring 80 artists creating a collaborative portrait the Earth’s rivers, lakes and oceans. Her work is held in several collections, including the artist book libraries at Yale University and the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity and the art collections of the University of Vermont Medical Center and Capitol One. In 2020, she was a recipient of the Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant in support of new and experimental cameraless photographic work, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. To further this work, she was granted a Provost Award for Summer Research in 2022 and a Cabell Fellowship for Sabbatical Research in 2025 from Hollins University.
From 2004-2020, she ran a public-access community darkroom and digital lab in Burlington, VT, and she is currently an Associate Professor of Photography at Hollins University, a historically women's college in Southwest VA, where she teaches traditional and experimental photographic methods.