Amy Friend creates multi-layered photographs that transport viewers into an emotional dream world. She devotes herself with great intensity not only to such issues as identity and the past but to the medium of photography as such.
In Friend’s latest series, Salt Soaked Sea, water has become a crucial feature of her artistic inquiry. The ocean is incorporated into memories of times past. Her prints, dipped into seawater, show a surprising and particularly weighty materiality: Friend leaves them to dry for several weeks until all of the water has evaporated, leaving behind a surface covered with crystalline traces of salt.
Friend’s process driven work has been included in national and international exhibitions, projects and festivals including, Gexto Photofestival (Spain), Paris Photo, incamera galerie (France), Museum London (Canada), Onassis Cultural Center (Greece), ASPA (Sardinia), DongGang Photography Museum (South Korea), GuatePhoto (Guatemala), Mosteiro de Tibães at the Encontros Da Imagem (Portugal), Rodman Hall (Canada), Photoville (New York, USA), National Portrait Gallery, (UK), and at the Abbaye De Silvacane, La Roque D'Antheron (France).
In 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2019 she was selected as one of the top 50 photographs in the juried Critical Mass International Photography Competition.
Amy Friend is an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Brock University, Niagara, Canada.