about the artist

 

Born and raised in Kansas City, Mintra Greer (b. 1990) received a B.F.A. in photography at the Kansas City Art Institute.  She finds fascination in the use of the photograph as a representation or documentation of time-based media.  As a photographer, much of her earlier work acts as singular still frames taken from a larger story.  The entire plot is oftentimes unknown to her, the true essence of the narrative contained in the single brief moment of the shutter click.



Also a composer and pianist, she utilizes music as another form of media in her work.  Color is just as easily presented through the ear as it is through the eye, and a story can be told in ways other than words and images.  Her series Shades of Purple and Shades of Red explore her impressions of words and their translation into music and image. 



Her fascination in the still image as a storytelling device led to the piece Simulacrum, a short science fiction film dealing with love, death, what it means to live as a human, and the still and moving image.  With the advent of this film, her narratives have taken a more cohesive and thoughtful form, drawing inspiration from films such as La Jetee and Janelle Monae's Archandroid Suite.  Science fiction has proven to be a beneficial canvas on which to paint her stories, untethered from the moorings of the world's current reality.

 

 

 

artist statement 

 

Storytelling has been infused in my work from the very beginning, from my writings to my music to my photography.  It manifested in not just words, but sounds and abstract gestures, captured in fleeting moments of stillness drawn from a larger image.  Oftentimes the story was ambiguous, leaving me with only a handful of emotions and impressions expressed through a single image.

 

​​As I have explored the use of words, sounds, and images, I have unearthed my interest in the conveyance of these emotions and impressions.  What is the most effective and vivid way to communicate my thoughts?  How can sound and image be combined to heighten the transference?  How can the still and moving image work together, uniquely, to tell the story?



These questions have naturally led me to filmmaking, though I began my explorations in photography.  The challenge of fitting a story or a story-segment into a single image has expanded into telling a story through many images, through camera movements and colors and character placements and interactions.  Sound lends physicality to the screen, and stillness, like silence, can speak in volumes.

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As the range of media expanded for me, so have my concepts.  Science fiction has proven to be fertile and fascinating ground on which to explore themes of love and human nature, the relationship between the human and nonhuman, life, death, and transformation in the face of mortality or immortality, and especially the relationships between people (or lack thereof).  These themes are fascinating to explore through the medium of filmmaking, which combines all of what I love.