Art Exhibit | West Orange Public Library

Lynne Breitfeller

After the Fire: Water Damaged

October 29, 2025 - December 14, 2025

Artist Statement

AFTER THE FIRE: WATER DAMAGED explores photographs as memory by examining the shape-shifting potential of altered images. As a result of a fire above my studio, water impacted my negatives and destroyed over a third of my archive. Much was discarded, but I retained a collection of the work.

During the pandemic, I rediscovered the kept artifacts. Water on emulsion transformed their compositions and morphed the remains into new forms and meanings shaped by happenstance.

By working with the damaged pieces, I came to terms with the loss of my photographic legacy and saw the images anew. The memory of what was had shifted into something different. Our experience of remembering the past can change each time it is revisited. It is elastic.

This series made me consider ideas of transience and new incarnations, the impermanence of possessions, and memory.

-Lynne Breitfeller

About the Artist

Lynne Breitfeller is a photographer who lives in New Jersey. She explores the nuances of everyday life, examining both the ordinary and unexpected. Human relationships, memory and loss, transience, and humor are recurrent themes in her work. She received her B.A. in English from William Paterson University and studied photography at the International Center for Photography (NY), Los Angeles Center for Photography (CA), and Maine Media College (ME). After a two-decade career in textbook publishing, she returned to the visual arts.

Her work has been exhibited at The Griffin Museum of Photography (MA), Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CO), Vermont Center for Photography (VT), Los Angeles Center for Photography and Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (CA), and Montclair Art Museum (NJ), amongst others. She was recognized in Photolucida’s 2023 Critical Mass Top 50, received the 29th Annual Member Exhibition Prize 2023 at the Griffin Museum, and first place in and Soho Photo National Competition 2023. Her work has been featured in Lenscratch, Fotofilmic, Analog Forever, SilverGrain, Black + White UK, SHOTS, and All About Photo magazines.