Kim Shaw Photography
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About Kim Shaw (née Podmenik)

I have a degree in journalism and a career in advertising behind me. But it was a chance assignment in Paris, a city full of artists and dreamers, that convinced me to leave the world of the predictable paycheck to follow my passion for photography.
In retrospect, it was a fairly obvious path. I come from a long line of photographers. My great-grandfather was a portrait photographer who worked from his 5th Avenue studio in New York. In 1997, after working as an assistant to a brilliant portrait photographer and studying at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, I struck out on my own, taking portraits of kids and an unbelievable number of dogs. A workshop with Don Kirby and Stu Levy on the Oregon Coast sparked an interest in the expressive potential of landscape photography.

Eventually, I traded in my Hasselblad for a pinhole camera and a Holga (an inexpensive plastic camera) and became a reluctant hiker and rock scaler! In 2002, I exhibited my first collection of landscape images made with the Holga ("Lilliputian Landscapes") in Portland, Oregon, USA. These images also featured in two group shows - one at the White Sturgeon Gallery in Vancouver, Washington and another at the Vancouver YMCA.

Subsequent projects included “Earthly Bodies,” a collection of botanical images made with a 4x5 pinhole camera and “99% Humidity,” which was inspired by my time in Hong Kong. Both projects were exhibited at the studios of Willmott Whyte (London) in March 2013 and then again at Piers Feetham Gallery (London) in November 2013. Two images from “Earthly Bodies,”(“Freesia” and “Orchid”) are held in the permanent collection at the Kresge Art Museum in East Lansing, Michigan.

My two most recent projects, “The Old Vinyl Factory” and “Isla Gray” formed the cornerstone of a successful solo show entitled “Paper Ghosts” which was featured at Jenny Blyth Fine Art at Art Jericho in Oxford in March 2014. The show was favourably reviewed by the Oxford Times and the curator and art blogger Sarah Mayhew Craddock. In February 2015, “Stairwell” (from The Old Vinyl Factory) was chosen by New York City’s Soho Photo Gallery for Krappy Kamera 2015. The annual exhibition showcases the best examples of low-tech photography, including images made with pinhole cameras, lomos, Dianas and Holgas.

I am currently a resident artist at Kew Art Studio and a member of the board at Photofusion.

View collections:

Paper Ghosts

Isla Gray

Earthly Bodies

99% Humidity

Lilliputian Landscapes



© 2015 Kim Shaw. All Rights Reserved.