Bosch Redux, Celebrating 500 years of Hieronymus Bosch with artist Lori Pond

Artist Lori Pond creates photographs of fantasy filled vignettes based on Hieronymus Bosch paintings from 500 years ago. Using live models, taxidermy animals, painted backgrounds, custom made latex prosthetics, hand made costumes and a bit of Photoshop magic, Pond meticulously brings Bosch’s world to life. With the 500 year anniversary of Jheronimus Bosch’s death upon us, Pond celebrates this visionary artist ahead of his time.

“Bosch Redux takes flight from the unprecedented imagination of the painter Hieronymus Bosch (16th century), using photography to emphasize the sacred power of details, sing hallelujah to the bizarre, and marvel at how art connects people across centuries and continents.
I became fascinated with Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” as a teenager. His limitless imagination and intricately detailed images captured my mind. In Bosch Redux, I hone in on details that occupy the background of his work. I put them center stage, lingering on what could otherwise be passed by. By bringing to the forefront the marginal, I confront my sense of smallness and un-importance in a vast world.”

“Bosch’s bizarre images also speak to my own fascination with oddities and outcasts. As a kid, I was absorbed by horror movies and “The Twilight Zone.” On my bedroom door I taped a photo of the fattest twins in the world riding minibikes side-by-side. My mom would periodically throw out this picture, but I always found it and re-taped it to my door. I cherished weirdness in all forms, since I grew up in Anaheim, where everything and everybody looked the same. The inhabitants of Bosch’s paintings would be at home in the most twisted dream.

Bosch further intrigued me because there was so little known about him – what he believed in, what he thought, who he was. I felt compelled to use my medium of photography to try to understand him, to inhabit his world and his mind. By painstakingly recreating in photographs the details that sprang from the mind of a painter five hundred years before I drew breath, I seek to understand: What draws people together? What creates affinity?”

“This impetus to understand what drives another artist is part of the universal human desire to connect, whether to another person or to the Divine. Though we are separated by time and place, gender and language, we are nonetheless linked as part of the same One. Through our fantastical representations, we assert that no matter how deformed a person may be, they are still a representation of Divinity.

The photographs that comprise Bosch Redux bring out of the margins and from the past, new images that challenge, push, disturb, prod, and delight the senses and minds of those seeing them.”

Lori Pond grew up in the shadow of Mickey Mouse’s ears in Anaheim, California. She shared a love of music performance and photography from a very young age with her father, who encouraged and inspired her in both areas. Studying flute Performance and Spanish at Indiana University Lori graduated Magna cum Laude. Continuing on to USC, she received a Master of Arts degree in Broadcast Journalism.
For the past 25 years, Lori has worked as a graphic designer/operator for mostly live television events and productions. Her work has appeared on award shows, such as the Grammys, Emmys, and Academy Awards; reality shows, (Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance) talk shows and industrial productions. Currently, her work can be seen on Conan O’Brien’s talk show.

Her interest in photography has never abated, but has taken on many forms. In the 80s, her hero was Garry Winogrand, so she mainly shot street/documentary images. Lori later took her interest to making macro studies of the natural world in a series called “The Intimate Universe.” Her many travels throughout the world have produced a large, vivid body of work.
Lori’s work in the past 5 years has deviated quite a lot. She went through a divorce after 20 years of marriage, and chronicled her emotions with self-portraits in her series, “Divorce.” Last year, she learned the wet plate collodion process and has been making tintype portraits in a series called “Strange Paradise.”
Lori’s award-winning photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work resides in the permanent collections of the Center for Fine Art Photography in Ft. Collins, CO, the Center for the Arts in Los Angeles, CA, and at the Morgan Stanley headquarters in New York. She is widely published online, in magazines and she has published two books, “Lori Pond–Self” and “Arboreal.”