Allison Madsen was born and raised in Flint, Michigan. She currently resides and works in Richmond, Virginia.

Madsen’s inquiries involve the abstraction of the photographic medium and it’s potential. Her unique silver gelatin prints contain an underlying world of content and emotion that transcend its aesthetic or conceptual value. By utilizing the challenging etch-bleach process of mordançage her Enigma series references photography's rich history through shadow and silhouette. These prints cannot be fixed and change over time through acid migration and oxidation, further exploring the medium’s impermanence. The paper has a body and can become an object or place rather than just an image.

Using the same technique in her latest series, the process itself is it’s own language. Macrocosm is representative of the unknown. Though initially subconscious, this ongoing archive is inspired by the exploration of space. Space, something always viewed from afar, is not particularly tangible. Much like space this most recent body of work is always moving, expanding, and changeable.  These pieces are a physical manifestation of a determination for connection and understanding with the past.

4 x 5 portrait by Cora Christian