Linda Cummings was born in Valley Forge, PA. She received a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design and her MFA from Mason Gross College of Art at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Cummings lives and works in New York City and teaches at the International Center of Photography.

In her "Slippages" Portfolio (1990 – 2000) Cummings' Black and White silver gelatin photographs depicted the absence of the female presence through the gesture of an empty slip tossed into the air within highly gendered public spaces. In later work the empty slip is seen hovering and floating through natural settings, such as tidal rivers and marshlands. In a subsequent portfolio "24 Frames in 24 Minutes" (2000- 2008) it is the artist herself, who is lifted, hurled, or floating through space. Her photo sequences capture the experience of being transported through time and space inside a plane, a subway, or a ferryboat. Through the "eye" of the camera, she ponders and memorializes the rapidly changing world around her. The resulting Black and White photos and color photographic scrolls reveal fragments, impressions and a series of fleeting images that record this emotional journey.

Cummings' most recent portfolio, "Stirring the Waters", (2009 – 2010) is a year-long photographic exploration of a 2-mile stretch of the Farm River in CT. Rooted in her performance-based ‘slip' photographs of the 90's, yet conceptually linked to her "24 Frames in 24 Minutes" project, Cummings is carried along the tidal river in her kayak with a paddle to navigate, stir, splash, stroke & draw upon its surface. Her camera frames and preserves the reciprocal relationship between her own nature and forces of nature swirling about. Cummings notes: "Everything is in motion until the camera extracts a moment from the flow of time." Capturing this interactivity her photos reflect the outside world while embodying her inner world & successfully blurring boundaries between inside/out, drawing/painting, performance & photography. In the exhibition catalogue for Cummings' "Stirring the Waters" exhibition at dm contemporary in October 2010, April Gornik writes: "Most of these photographs look through one substance to another…moment as substance…I want to reach through these photographs, but also to hold my hands there so that they can become part of the new substance they reveal."

Cummings' photographs have been exhibited extensively in museums and galleries both nationally and internationally. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards from prominent art organizations including the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Bronx Museum of Art. Her work has been featured in BLIND SPOT and the "Director's Cut" of APERTURE. Cummings' work is included in many private and museum collections, including the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian, Washington, DC; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY; Museo Nazionale della Fotographia de Brescia, Brescia, Italy; and Musee Jenisch, Vevey, Switzerland.

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