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Photography

By Cary Loren

Photography was a special interest for Bahnmiller, who first picked up a camera during her student days at the University of Michigan. She used black-and-white film for photography projects between 1975 and 1978. The negatives were neatly kept in dated order inside a glassine negative index file. About 800 black-and-white negatives exist. The photographs may have been made for a beginning photography class at the university.

To document Detroit, Bahnmiller mainly used slide film, which was held in binders connected to her urban projects. From slides she would print color Xeroxes. Handmade prints of the photographs don’t show up in her estate or archive, suggesting prints were never made. Photography subjects included outings at Cedar Lake and Silver Lake, Pickney and Milan, Michigan, camping in Saginaw, her family home, and a vacation in Florida. A few images contain artistic photography from a series of rotting squash, self-portraits, and nudes taken in a meadow.


Read next: Books and Quotations, inside Doom and Glory in the Cass Corridor: A Dossier on Cay Bahnmiller by Cary Loren



Founded in 2020, Three Fold is an independent quarterly based in Detroit that presents exploratory points of view on arts, culture, and society in addition to original works in various media, including visual art, literature, film and the performing arts. We solicit and commission contributions from artists, writers, and activists around the world. Three Fold is a publication of Trinosophes Projects, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

Three Fold recognizes, supports, and advocates for the sovereignty of Michigan's twelve federally-recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. We operate on occupied territories called Waawiiyaataanong, named by the Anishinaabeg and including the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Bodewatomi (Potawatomi) peoples. We hold to commit to Indigenous communities in Waawiiyaataanong, their elders, both past and present, and future generations.