Poignant Pics no. 56 - On Katia Dermott's "Justine"

Dermott began this series of platinum-palladium portraiture work in 2018, after studying the work of Sally Mann. Her attraction to Mann was twofold; Dermott, like Mann, had also photographed her family. But even more importantly, Dermott was interested in the qualities and beauty Mann brings out in the photographic print itself.

Her portraits seemed to capture something, perhaps a moment of psychological conflict or existential youth angst. I don't find that discomfort of the sitter with the photographer, but rather via Dermott showing something about who her sitters are and how they relate in the world. The work is somber, direct, and confrontational, showing hints of Nicholas Nixon from his original image of the Brown sisters, made in 1975.

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Poignant Pics no. 54: On Luther Gerlach’s “Last Snow #1”

"Beauty has become such an unfashionable word in art, so I hesitate to say this, but really there is no other answer: I'm looking for beauty, I want to participate in beauty, I want to share it with the world. It's not necessarily a romantic beauty that I'm looking for — it's about feeling an emotional connection with forces that are greater than us like nature or time, even destruction."

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Poignant Pics no. 53: On Anne Eder's "Found Structure #5"

In a similar though more dire mindset than historian Coffin, Eder said, "The reef was forged in the crucible of climate change, and its existence is threatened by it now. The urgency of my documentation is heightened by the fact that at present rates of rising temperatures, and given the occurrence of increasingly violent storms, the reef could disappear beneath the ocean waves in a shockingly short time, leaving the mainland unprotected and hundreds of bird species without nesting areas."

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Poignant Pics no. 52 - On Two Works from Kumi Oguro

To me, Kumi's works are a combination of sensual and tragic. The photographs are often disquieting due to her intentional use of this dichotomy. The thread winding through them is the inability of the viewer to see the faces of her models. There is attention to small detail while at the same time, she limits the specific information she wants us to see. She leaves it to her viewers to interpret the work through their cultural touchstones and imaginations.

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Poignant Portfolio no. 35: Sally Chapman

Hello readers, I’m pleased to share our first poignant portfolio from work seen at the 2021 Click! Portfolio Reviews. I’ve been fortunate to review work for Click! over the past 4 years both in person and now online, which as you can guess is a hard task when looking at work that really resonates the best in tangible form. From my experience, Click! has drawn in some of my favorite styles of photography (and photographers for that matter). Meaning, I’ve seen a lot of great hand-crafted process work over the years and these lovely mixed media cyanotypes by Sally Chapman are no exception.

Let’s not talk about the process though, Chapman covers that below, but I will say this, I dig it. I’m a romantic, at the very least when it comes to art. Easily taken with pretty pictures. But it is more than just that, Chapman’s recontextualizing of monuments into new environments nods to the reclamation of the land by nature. An apocalypse even. And Chapman’s color use and frame spillover are beautifully designed.

Spend some time with these and take in the details, you won’t regret it. Thanks, Sally for sharing your work with us!

Blue Mitchell @onetwelveprojects

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Poignant Pics no. 51 - On Karen Divine's "Almsgiving"

Her working process is something she calls 'mindless creativity.' She allows the pieces to evolve intuitively, not knowing what the result may become. Divine says that she pushes beyond what she knows and allows the magic to happen by working with the images and allowing them to speak. "Characters" (for lack of a better word) emerge, and some get replaced or left behind. Eventually, the story unfolds and becomes clear to her, all via a process of semi-controlled intuitive play. One symbol may dictate some of the others as the point of the work emerges from Divine's subconscious.

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Poignant Pics no. 50 - On Two Works from Karen Olson

Many tree-loving photographers manifest their adoration by making photographs of trees. I’m not someone who is quickly captivated by images of trees. I mean, sure, I like them. They are often pretty, and in their way, can be comforting as a substitute for actually being out in the world of nature. If climate makes communing with a tree challenging - due to weather or simply scarcity, as in a desert or a city of skyscrapers - then the image has even greater importance. Then there are images of trees that seek to cause us to take action urgently or we will leave our children and grandchildren an unliveable planet without trees or natural vegetation.

But Olson’s work doesn’t fit neatly into either of these boxes. She uses her photographs of trees to create 3-d, sculptural objects. They are not simply a clever manner of displaying the imagery; they are part and parcel of the conceptual underpinning of this work. Now, that hugely gets my attention!

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Poignant Pics no. 49 - On Alayna Pernell's “With Care To Ms. Maudelle Bass Weston”

"I have spent the past year researching and uncovering suppressed images of Black women held in photographic collections at the Art Institute of Chicago. The images I have found and researched thus far depict the exploitation and violence towards Black women. I excavated, re-photographed, re-captioned, and re-contextualized the original works. By engaging with these images with the intervention of my hands and my body, I rescue and protect Black women's bodies and their humanity so that they can be seen and heard. With my ongoing body of work entitled Our Mothers' Gardens, I beg for more than the visibility of Black women in institutional collections and restorative justice. I also desire for the issue around institutions holding and silencing collections of visible and (in)visible violent visual depictions of Black women to be further highlighted." -Alayna Pernell

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Poignant Portfolio no 34: Michelle Robinson

I stumbled upon Michelle Robinson's work when I saw a PR notice in my FB feed for an upcoming exhibition of her work entitled You Are Not Here. I knew I had to see more, so I went online and searched the interwebs, where I came upon this project, Transmission. This mixed media work is unusual in that it manifests in various forms, including wet darkroom work, collage, printmaking, encaustic, and sewing.

Many people would have difficulty integrating so many different styles into a cohesive project, but Robinson is so deft at this that she makes it look easy. My favorites amongst the varied works are the pieces that are the most abstracted. Processed by hand, then torn apart and sewn into new non-literal imagery that is still evocative of nature and the built environment. The curled edges, irregular margins, hanging threads, and earth and sea tones all come together with the imagery to speak to an uneasy partnership between the manufactured and the natural worlds.

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Poignant Pics no. 48 - On Susan Rosenberg Jones' "Teatime"

Anyone who has seen Susan's work knows that she has concentrated on topics that typically affect someone later in life, all seen through a veil of sensitivity and love. In particular, her self-portraits deal with aging and acceptance as subject matter. Like many of us, the pandemic changed her lifestyle. In Rosenberg Jones' case, she turned the camera on herself as she and her husband were locked down in their high-rise NYC apartment. She told me, "Michelle Obama described a 'mild depression' which I understood completely. As the pandemic, toxic political and social climate, and general quality of life presented a troublesome reality, I continued to make these photographs into 2021. Anxiety about aging and isolation remains, albeit with some hope for the future mixed in."

For this image, she sat in her living room in her mother's antique chair, holding a prized painted teacup, and imagined herself having afternoon tea. She said, "When I viewed the image, I thought it to be a statement about memory, precious objects, body language, and aging."

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Poignant Pics no. 47 - On Debe Arlook's “Spike Waves”

Asked about Spike Waves itself, Debe told me that although David is non-verbal, he still communicates via various mannerisms. “That particular day, David refused his medicine by turning away from Lori." (It seems that's quite a conundrum for Lori, because David requires the medication.) Debe also stated, "Six months after making the photo of David, I saw the fern. It reminded me of brain activity. But wasn't until I edited this image, accenting the shape of his headless body, that I saw the matching of organic shapes of the fern, his scoliotic curve and protruding ribs."

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Poignant Pics no. 46 - On Da’Shaunae Marisa’s “004”

Asked about this image, she told me, "My project involves creating miniature portraits with instant film. I analyze the personality of each individual before photographing them. I use a pack of Fujifilm Instax Mini to photograph different elements of the person that I think best represents their personality. I may also photograph a particular style to capture them as well. After I take the photographs, I spend time piecing each photograph together into a single piece of work. Using the Instax Mini allowed the project to gain more depth. It adds physical elements that people can touch. I varied the distance for each frame to create a layered effect."

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Poignant Portfolio no 32: Carolina Krieger

O Espelho do Avesso (The Mirror of the Reverse) is about silence and duality, and both live within the imagery of this work. There is nothing showy nor screaming, "Look at me!" here. Like an ASMR whisper, it draws you in and makes your head tingle just a little. Subdued and dark, she uses desaturated colors to achieve quietness. You almost feel like carefully tiptoeing from image to image so as not to disturb the silence.

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Poignant Pics no. 44 - On Ivan Wentland's "Palm Light"

What attracted me to Wentland's portfolio and this specific image is simple: speaking as a Hawai'i resident, this image sings Hawai'i. The palm leaf and the unique quality of the light imbue the image with a sense of place, this place. His son resembles how my son looked when he was young, and like so many other children here in the islands who are hapa, or mixed race. If you know this place well, you immediately recognize this as a picture of every keikikane (boy) as well as of our Hawaiian islands. In effect, it's an environmental portrait sans environment.

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Traverse no. 6: Ricardo Miguel Hernández

With this installment, I have the honor of highlighting the unique works of Cuban artist Ricardo Miguel Hernández and his When memory turns to dust collection. It is photographs like this that seriously pull me in and make me linger a lot longer than I usually would. Isn't that what any great picture does? Shouldn't that always be the goal of the creator? There's a lot to take in and discover in every image in his series, as each has its own story to tell. What's more, it's not a story that he invents, but one that the viewer receives from their neurons bouncing around and creating it at a cellular level in their head. We develop and drive the tale built upon our past and present, using Hernández's fractured images as fuel. I, for one, welcome this from imagery that is as much installation work or performance art as it is photography. Hernández reminds us what cut, copy, and paste were before the computer age. These images are not composites put together in Photoshop but physical objects that have been rebuilt and reborn as assemblages.

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Poignant Pics no. 42 - On Clare Acford's "Darkness Awaits Me"...

While some of her images lean towards the style and themes of Francesca Woodman, there is a quality to Acford's work that reminds me of Kumi Oguro's. Their subject matter and outward styles are markedly different, but both similarly use the trope of ambiguity. I'm specifically referring to how both utilize indeterminate space, the hidden faces, and a heightened sense of tension or danger.

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