'The Last Laugh,' 'Animal Nature,' 'Ghost Train'

WHO: Rebecca Dietz, 42

MEDIUM: Photography

BEST KNOWN FOR: Works in which “there's usually a sense of beauty and unease mixed together,” she said. Her photographs also are influenced by her interest in carnivals. A Delaware native, Dietz visited amusement parks and boardwalks along the mid-Atlantic coast as a child in the 1960s. Later, she worked as a performance artist (specializing in fire-eating) in San Francisco and photographed circus performers there. In “Patterns in Freefall,” a series of black-and-white photographs of roller coasters curving against the sky, Dietz sees a visual depiction of the weightlessness she felt learning to skydive. The coasters (which resemble fleshless spines) also hold an aura of death. She lightly solarized some of the images. “They move from a realism into a solarized decay,” she said. She also has taken color photographs of gardens at night, which results in artificial-looking colors. “The natural world becomes oddly carnival to me, like a haunted house, but beautiful at the same time because the colors are so lush,” she said.

CURRENTLY: Her Fotoseptiembre exhibit, “Souvenirs,” consists of black-and-white images of objects in the amusement parks of her childhood. Some of the objects are broken relics, such as the clown head lying forgotten in a field in “The Last Laugh.” “The ‘Souvenir' series is like portraits to me, portraits of my past,” Dietz said. “It's at once reconnecting with childhood and measuring the distance from it. I'm both trying to reach back and feel that childhood wonder, but there's also this sense of decay now.”

BACKGROUND: Dietz earned her BFA in printmaking and her MFA in photography at the University of Delaware.

PAYING THE BILLS: She teaches photography at San Antonio College.

CHECK HER OUT: “Souvenirs” opens at C-Art Studio, 1426 W. Craig Place, with a reception from 6 to 10 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 12. Bonus: Dietz might demonstrate her fire-eating skills. The exhibit is open by appointment through Oct. 7; call (210) 380-6508. Or view her work at rebeccadietz.com.

Jessica Belasco | 210SA contributor