Poignant Portfolios

At the beginning of 2023, I had the pleasure of participating in LACP’s photo reviews. Although there are some obvious limitations to reviewing work online rather than in person, it’s still great to meet new people and see new projects that are unfolding. One of the projects that struck a chord with me was Connolly’s “Wishmaker” series and the Landau gallery project.

I’m on a bit of a tear here with some environmental articles and bodies of work. It’s hard to pass them up, primarily because of the immediacy of the situation facing future generations. I think anyone with an eye towards wanting to live on an inhabitable planet and avoiding severe climate disasters might be having some sleepless hours during the night on occasion. Speaking about the gravity of the situation and what may come of it to the youth of our world has become a top priority for many, especially parents. So once again, I bring you something to chew on and think about. This time around is a body of work I saw while reviewing portfolios during Review Santa Fe last November – Cracks in the Ice, by photographer Jason Lindsey.

The photographic art world is a place where an immense amount of skills and abilities reside. It takes a considerable amount of time and energy to excel in any one of them, and is one of the things that I'm constantly surprised and delighted by. It's not simply that people put so much energy into them, but those with multiple talents that stand out clearly have a passion for the medium, often rising above the fray. So, this is not the first time that the work of Cathy Cone has been on my radar, and it is for this aforementioned reason that it remains there. She embodies the work ethic, sheer talent, and creative energy that it takes to not only maintain a discerning photographic eye but also have the adjacent qualifications that make her a master printmaker. While I am highlighting a specific body of work here, a cursory look at past collections patently spells this out, and I implore you to seek her photographs out whenever possible.

As an artist, Grew explores her intentions through a variety of media, including photography, painting, printmaking, installation, and collage. For this latest series, she combines alternative photographic processes with installation to create something that piques the imagination with a visual tapestry worth experiencing. Photographic representations of living forest scenes are made as lantern slides using the carbon printing method on glass, with the carbon harvested from the actual coals left behind from the fires. The glass plate images are then hung towards the center of a room to represent the Ghost Forest. As a result, the experience is immersive and interactive. Grew also does an incredible job of rigging the individual plates adeptly throughout the installation through a combination of cables and glass mounts.

Trees are an essential building block of this planet, and most importantly, without trees, there is no life at all. Artists, writers, and philosophers all wax poetic from the inspiration found in sharing our lands with them. So it’s easy to see why so many gravitate towards photographing trees – they are vital, unique, and have a beauty that is pure and significant to the energy they project.

Adam Gerlach is one of these photographers that feels the pull of trees and captures their essence in his own uncommon way.

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room, shall we? As a person and artist, Molly McCall is a favorite around these parts. She has appeared in Analog Forever Magazine, Catalyst: Interviews, and Diffusion Annual – all outlets that show, promote, and emphasize photographic creatives and creativity.

Now she’s here on Poignant Portfolios, and in order to illustrate her work once again as a visual support component for her appearance on The Diffusion Tapes podcast. Apparently, Blue Mitchell and I have been sending up flares for a while now. Oh damn – I didn’t think we worked for her, but maybe we do! 

Once again, I'm sitting at the table reviewing work for Photolucida in April of 2022, and in comes Landry Major to show me her platinum/palladium and gelatin silver prints of horses and ranch life of the American West. Am I familiar with work like this? Yes. Have I seen a multitude of images of the West through the eyes of the cowboy and what they represent from an Americana perspective? Again, yes. But have I seen it done so well and beautifully that I cannot take my eyes off the scenes I'm seeing presented to me? Absolutely not.

As I learned, this collection, Winter's Horses, is a subset of a larger body of work from Major, Keepers of the West. However, it was the winter images that stood out to me (note: everything here is incredible). These images were simply magical, as what one might expect from witnessing scenes in such a frosty environment. Making photographs in this environment is difficult at best, but when you couple that with fast-moving subjects of an unpredictable nature, you more or less have a recipe for disaster. That's why I was so stunned by what I saw in this work. Major has committed herself fully to capturing the essence of these beasts and those who strive to control and use them in their ranching efforts.

The world of fashion and beauty is most certainly a strange one to most people. Even those who are thrilled and enamored with the latest trends and styles often find a never-ending stream of oddities coming from designers and cosmetic companies. Unfortunately, there's also a dark side to it all - one that teaches young girls the perfection of their skin, hair, teeth, and weight are paramount in their lives. Having been on my fair share of fashion shoots for some of these companies, I can say that I've seen and heard things that are not in the best interest of any impressionable young girl.

It's no mystery to anyone who knows the slightest thing about me that I'm drawn to art or photography that has an overwhelmingly crushing and f'd up appearance. It's both a reflection and a response. When you couple that with a message about the environment, climate change, or rising sea levels, then you have my undivided attention.

Thankfully, in the age of digital, there are still photographers experimenting in the darkroom and Jane Olin is one of those folks. Olin has a long history with the community of photography and has studied with some of the biggest influencers in the craft and now has become one herself. We first published some of Olin’s work, Thirteen Crows, in The Matter of Light (Diffusion, Volume VI) and I believe that was my first introduction to her. Thankfully, Ann Jastrab reintroduced us by way of her newest series, Intimate Conversations where Olin has expanded on her darkroom experimentation by creating spontaneous happy accidents with darkroom chemistry and light.

Traumatic events weave themselves into our identity and journey. Norah experiments with depicting visceral experiences of emotional states and memories. Childhood and intergenerational trauma live within my body and mind in a cyclical process of death, liminal space, and rebirth. Yet, my vivid reality is unseen by others. Moments of despair and hope, fear and peace, defeat and triumph, pass unmarked to the outside world.

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

Archana Vikram's photographic series "The Unwelcome" brings to light the untold horrors of female infanticide routinely practiced in India and is a call for action to put an end to this barbaric practice.

The sense of nostalgia evoked in the graphic synthesis of these images is augmented through the use of a wash of warm sepia tones that permeate the images. There is also a visual correlation between inhabitants of the boxes and the boxes themselves. The folds of the boxes having a quality not unlike origami, is reflected in the contortionist-like bending of the human forms within.

The unusual and dissimilar combination of people and cardboard boxes is visually unified through the repetition of angles. Despite pairing such disparate elements, I bring them together harmoniously to form images with visual impact, and are frankly, fun to look at.

These images from Joanne Chaus’ Conversations with Myself series were made between 2016-2020. They are visual diary of the joys and pathos of daily life, as seen and felt by the young girl within who has become a woman, a mother, and a wife, as a female in our society navigating the challenges and incongruities of desires, constraints and personal will.

395 Days and Counting is an essay composed of images produced during quarantine due to Covid-19. Most of them were taken at my apartment in São Paulo, Brazil, and reflect this period of a contemplative mood when time seemed suspended. This is a diary about the isolation experienced during these days.

Precisely Now by Peggy Washburn

In my first-grade class, I was taught to write with my right hand. I was more comfortable with my left. We had big sheets of paper and were asked to make lines, then circles using our whole arm. I made hundreds, maybe thousands of circles. I pasted these circles, along with found objects into books. It helped me to record my thoughts and make visual order. It also allowed me to express the familiar disorder of a child’s mind. I later added drawings and eventually my photographs.

Fictitious Family by Norma Córdova

My father was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimers in 1997, and after a long struggle with dementia, passed away in 2007. The intervening ten years were the most difficult years of my life. It profoundly changed the dynamics of my family, and my own personal trajectory, especially as Alzheimers can carry a stigma in Mexican communities.

Somewhere in those ten years, I picked up a camera and began to develop my craft.

To Which We Return by Kristoffer Johnson

To Which We Return focuses on the impermanence and fragility of the human body and the physiological problems that are inherent with existence.

Sense of Self by Jane Szabo

Graciously infused with movement, Sense of Self is a series of expressive, conceptual self-portraits. Using movement and light to create a blurred, diffuse quality, I confront my own vulnerability, as well as my attempts to create a sense of order from the natural chaos of personal environment and emotion.

Reimagined Landscapes by Joseph Wright

This work was borne out of threads of inquiry and experimentation, and an almost obsessive need to continue to remain creative and somehow escape the initial pandemic lockdown in March 2020. Attempting to stay connected to the environments I was now denied access to. But, still wanting to work within the loose confines of photographic processes, exploring their simplest forms – subject, (sun)light, and a receptive material. All whilst never venturing further than 10-feet from my back door.

Small Animal by Amanda Tinker

In this series of photographs, I arrange details from nature collected from my family garden, children’s books, and vintage identification guides, behind large glass panels. Each photograph looks at the natural world as if it were held just for our observation, suspended far from any recognizable landscape. Nature’s small beauties, such as birds, butterflies, twigs, and petals become objects of contemplation, organized into layered configurations. As arrangements these are illusions. I am inspired by the “impossible bouquet” of Dutch still life, where flowers that would never bloom together in nature are painted together in lavish arrays.

Recovery of Small Thoughts

A book text diary in words and photographs by Sara Silks

Now is Always by Vaune Trachtman

This work began one summer in the early 1930s when my father shot a few rolls of film near his father's drugstore in Philadelphia. Nearly 90 years later I was given the negatives by a relative. Working from the original negatives, I've combined the people from my father's neighborhood with my own cell phone images, many of which were shot from windows and moving vehicles.

Quarantine Chronicles by Neil Kramer

Quarantine in Queens is a diaristic visual journal of a paradoxical family experiencing the COVID-19 quarantine together inside one apartment in Queens, NY.