I Think I Made You Up Inside My Head

Alison A. Smith and Tracy Longley-Cook

Photography is so often considered a factual medium, documenting the world as it exists – It’s indexical nature so frequently used for cataloging, or fixing the proof of a moment. We might believe that “the camera never lies,” though even documentary photography is always a subjective, mediated version of reality. But just the way a typewriter can be utilized by both reporter and poet, so does the lens have the power to capture fiction as well as fact. Early in photography’s history, artists like Julia Margaret Cameron and Gertrude Käsebier created lyrical and allegorical images with their cameras. This “directorial mode” (in contrast to documentary) was used by artists like Cindy Sherman, Sandy Skoglund, and Gregory Crewdson to construct worlds both intimate and grand like an auteur of the cinema.

These two artists create images much more akin to poetry. The words are there, artfully chosen and pleasing to the viewer, and yet the totality of their meaning is elusive. They provoke subconscious connections. There is no one conclusion we, the viewers, would agree upon. The images are fabricated from a personal wellspring of the artist, but when rendered so skillfully, we find our own associations and draw connections.

The Edwardian articles – an apothecary bottle and a lock of hair – bring an uneasy nostalgia to the work of Alison A. Smith. Her still life imagery, reminiscent of vanitas painting, hints at desperation and catharsis. In the work of Tracy Longley-Cook, the Jungian archetypes of books and eggs are transformed by the ritualistic performance of the anonymous figure. They feel as if snatched from dreams.

These images, like good poetry, you must read, sat with it for a while, and read again.

- Christopher Schneberger, curator