Parisiennes.  The women of Paris are famous for their style and poise.  I have always been intrigued by the cultural differences between American and French women.  But on a recent trip there, I was more interested in discovering the various singularities that exist beneath the common perception.

 
Hilary Neroni
Member Grand Prize Winner

Hilary Neroni’s first recognized work as a young photographer was in abstract architectural and macro work.  In these pieces, the beauty of the known world was revealed in the abstraction of shapes and color.  After college, where she majored in theatre but spent as many hours in the dark room as on stage, Neroni deepened her technical skills in medium and large format photography classes.  Meanwhile, her interest in documenting people’s lives led her to several video and photography projects in which she created portraits both autobiographical and of friends and neighbors. 
 
Neroni’s fascination with the image led her on a parallel investigation into film through a Ph.D. in the Cinematic Arts from USC and a subsequent career as a professor teaching film and television studies at the University of Vermont.  And though the early demands of this career were somewhat time consuming, Neroni never stopped photographing.  Recently, she has rededicated herself to her photography. 
 
These days she finds street photography a style that brings together her early fascination with abstraction and her more current interest in the documentary tradition.  Influenced by the traditions of French and American street photography, and buoyed by a recent course in street photography with Peter Turnley, Neroni’s ongoing project is to document the people in the cities close to her (Burlington, Vermont; Montreal; Boston, New York City).  In this project, she focuses on the way that our public gestures can be both documents of our culture and intimate portraits.  She is most drawn toward creating character studies even in the instantaneous encounter.
 
www.hilaryneroni.com
 

All photos copyright Hilary Neroni, not for reproduction in any manner, please contact the artist.

Direct Link to Hilary Neroni Gallery
http://womeninphotography.org/Events-Exhibits/2011_competition/gallery/HilaryNeroni.html
Tiny URL of the same page
http://tinyurl.com/4vawtnf