This past break I had the pleasure of visiting Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco. The gallery was exhibiting a solo show of the photography of Holly Andres titled Holly Andres: Sparrow Lane. This collection of photography embodies the return to the personal and the vague expression of memory prominent in contemporary post-modern art. Ambiguity and intrigue are essential to this body of work.
Andres presents a series of color photographs, chronicling mysterious an enchanting moments of female adolescence. For each photo, the artist has composed an extravagant and meticulously detailed set for the captured scene. This, along with the bright colors and curious scenarios give a sense of other worldliness. In this series Andres is both presenting the viewer with something sincerely familiar about the childhood experience, while imbuing the represented memory with aspects of the supernatural.
Some highlights from her exhibition:
One of my favorite photographs was humorously titled "The Lost Bird", and the scene seems reminiscent of a movie still. The figure at the bottom of the picture giving the piece a sense of drama of the hunt, while the girls who illogically look behind a picture frame make the photo playful as well as surreal.
Many of the photographs were glimpses onto personal and partial memories of the artist, presented to the viewer with dreamlike lighting, presumably how one remembers defining moments from their youth. One shows a little girl hanging a locket from a bird's nest, a special hiding spot or meeting place perhaps. Her gaze at something in the sky and out of frame endows the scene with an eerie quality that is a defining aspect of this artist's work.
Darker memories also prevail in this series, one fantastic photo titled "The Dark Portal" shows a little girl at the door of a small crawl space, golden locks of hair litter the hallways behind her as two older girls crawl up into the attic. The events of the scene are ambiguous, but the locks of hair belong to someone, and one can imagine the trauma felt by the little girl as she goes to her hiding place. I liked that Andres inserts traces of the magical or supernatural in these scenes, to further their ambiguity but also express the intangibility of events that occur in our youth.
Pictures of the young women coming upon destroyed objects (a pink armchair lying out on the road, a ripped pillow, a broken jug of milk on the front porch) encouraged a reading of a somewhat troubled adolescence, where these damaged pieces of the home cannot quite be comprehended yet in the colorful haze of childhood. These pieces were the most engaging, as Andres is so successful at conveying suspense and ominousness in her work. The artist does a wonderful job of expressing the innocence of youth, while maintaining a surreal grasp on more sinister themes. I think this is what makes her work both immediately accessible and enjoyable, while simultaneously being unsettling and thought-provoking when one investigates the pictures further.
Another prominent theme in this series is the coming-of -age story of the female adolescent. Pictures that dealt with this were charming depictions of the young subjects discovering the magical and unknown properties of adult life while snooping through their mother's things and belongings (though it would be prudent to say that it does not matter the relationships or details of the scene, because Andres relates images outside of specific time and place, and is more interested in conveying an essence of a memory, or a moment of powerful feeling that has staying power from childhood). "The Red Purse" shows a little girl opening up a ladies' handbag to a bright and glowing light that illuminates her face in the dark bedroom. I thought this was a wonderful way to show the excitement and wonder of a child discovering some aspect of adult life. However in this picture and the rest there is also an ominous feeling, that what they find is not nessecarily positive. She uses the vivid olor and surreal lighting as a way to convey this sense of dreamlike memory, but it also succeeds in communicating the mystery and subsequent sinister nature of some childhood discoveries.
("The DIscarded Photo" below, is a good example of this ominous feeling).The ambiguity of these photographs enhances their power, as the viewer can transfer onto them their own experiences whether with violence and arguments, coming of age memories, or glimpses back to the small rituals and oddities everyone experiences as a child. Andres is thus successful in combining the familiar and known with the forgotten and magical.
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