This weekend I got to see two shows for photographers I admire —both who play with what a photograph is, and what it can be besides an image on the gallery wall.
Carlin Brown's show, What else is a window did a fantastic job of housing photographs and sculpture in the same space. My favorite piece was the Blue Room, which besides being serene and otherworldly, also made me think of windows as the frame of a photograph. Her statement says it best: The window opens onto a world beyond—it is where surface meets depth, where transparency meets its barriers.
View her website (and some better photographs of the show) here, and see her show (by appointment only through June 24) at Melanie Flood Projects in SW Portland.
The second show, Take/Cover at the OV Project Space was for artist Serrah Russell, whose work I've been following mostly on Instagram. It was really lovely to get to see some of it in person. Since finding her through her work with Vignettes, I've been so drawn to her use of collage. The splices of images she works with play so much with the idea of photographs as physical objects. (An idea I love & work with myself, and it's so refreshing to see other interpretations of it.) I also really appreciated her use of sentimentality. In the piece I was most taken with was Finding what you never knew you lost, a necklace trapped behind a vellum sheet. This physical object seemed to hold so much sentimental weight, and the simple photo collage on top gave my mind space to form my own readings and attachments.
View her website here (So many amazing projects to look at!), and keep up with OV Project Space here. (Take/Cover was a one night show, but I'm sure OV will be putting on more good shows.)