PROOF

A demonstrable occurrence. A pre-final print. To check something against a record of fact.

Juxtaposing these two bodies of work creates an exercise in contemplation, in considering the relationship between portraits of earthly bodies and human ones. 

The territory of these bodies ranges from the contours of the one-off time frame land portraits—a single timeline within the trajectory of a landscape’s shifting identity—and the evolution of the personal portraits, a sub series of the same individual embodying different selves over time.

Time’s trajectory, and its stillness, is a common denominator here. There is the sense of reassurance that human, and earthly, life persists, through and in spite of tragedies and fallbacks, fires and ash, and adolescent struggles. The anthropomorphic elements of land can also work in reverse, can make us rethink the way minute changes are etched on the bodies of these adolescents. We feel gratified and reassured to view a grid of portraits, resembling a table of elements, reflecting a vocabulary of change and recalling the Beckers’ typologies—and a reliable record—proof—that we’re still here.

Do these images reinforce or resist photography’s truth telling function, its reliable documentary?

Doreen Schmidt, curator