Rachel Girard Reisert

Still and All

September 5 - October 31, 2008

My photographs take shape in the backyard, a microcosm for the larger world, where on a daily basis, life in various forms begins, expands, and eventually dies. In the moments found and pictured, I consider the metaphorical possibilities of object and light, and the significance not only of what we know, but how.

As presence requires absence to be truly understood, light and shadow are interdependent necessities in bringing forth the photograph as object – mirroring the dualities in the world as in our own perceptions. By subtraction from the world, each image remains a fragment of space and time, creating something distinct, and simultaneously reflecting what has already passed. In this reductive and additive ritual, I acknowledge the continuous cycle of giving and taking, as it emulates the interchange of life and death. Beauty is affirmed within this transformation, heightening the awareness of desire and hope, as the picture becomes testament to the pleasure as well as the pain of life.

Serving as a meditation on mortality and impermanence, these images reference the rich historical tradition in Dutch still life painting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries known as vanitas. Items commonly represented in these paintings include skulls, flowers at the edge of decay, fresh and rotten fruit, bubbles, clocks, jewels, books and musical instruments to serve as reminders for the brevity of life. While employing some of the materials that have been traditional symbols of this theme, the photographs create a new set of visual clues rooted in a contemporary personal and cultural perspective.

I offer these images as a poet extends words. Like lines of a poem, they remain elusive in how meaning is attached and allow for multiple understandings. Resolution is permutable, never becoming fixed or definitive. Perception and interpretation are key in discovering the intersections of our circles of knowing, and ultimately reveal our most fundamental connections as human beings.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Rachel Girard Reisert received her BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design in 2002 and her MFA from Arizona State University in 2007. Her photographs and artist books have been exhibited in Alabama, Arizona, Kentucky, Ohio, Texas, Tennessee, New Mexico, New York and Hungary. She is currently an Adjunct Professor of Photography at the University of Cincinnati. http://www.rachelgirardreisert.com