A number of years ago, I was an artist-in-residence at the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston. There, I was free to walk, meditate and slowly choose what interested me about the space to photograph. The experience was exciting, as the challenge of transforming existing objects of art into something else intrigued me since earlier work I did with books where I played with photographing art reproductions on the printed page. One of the pleasures of working in museums the way I do lies in how I can become a sort of ad hoc curator. I get to organize installations of art to suggest a sisterhood among pieces that is based on my own visual hunger. I like to play in museums.
These experiments often lead me to take more and more liberties in my choreography of art objects to fashion unexpected conversations. For example, the sandwiching of a Hopper and a Nadelman at the Yale Art Gallery “feels” like an unknown De Chirico or Magritte. Other strategies involve photographing invented dioramas consisting of old picture frames, three-dimensional objects and paintings. I think of these pieces, often, as theatrical stages on which plots can thicken visually.
Isabella in the Little Salon, Gardner Museum, 1998
Europa Dimly Lit, Gardner Museum, 1998
David and the Earl of Arundel, Gardner Museum, 1998
Inghirami, Gardner Museum, 1998
King Philip IV by Velasquez, Gardner Museum, 1998
Isabella and Tapestry, Gardner Museum, 1998
Tim and Rembrandt, Gardner Museum, 1998
Two Buildings, Gardner Museum, 1998
Two Paintings Sharing an Arch, 1998
Mother and Son, 1998
Camera Obscura: Windows in Gallery with Hopper Painting, Whitney Museum, 2003
Camera Obscura: Windows in Gallery With Two Paintings, Whitney Museum, 2003
Camera Obscura: The Philadelphia Museum of Art East Entrance in Gallery #171 with a DeChirico Painting, 2005
Camera Obscura: The Philadelphia Museum of Art East Entrance in Gallery #171 with a DeCherico Painting, 2005
Ground Swell, 2007
Morning Sun, 2007
Sunday, 2007
Nadelman-Hopper, 2008
Rinehard-Innes, 2008
Standing Woman, Yale University Art Gallery, 2009
Frame and Shadow of Gaius Caesar, Yale University Art Gallery, 2009
Frishmuth / Corot, Yale University Art Gallery, 2009
Frame and Ceremonial Procession – Benin + Enduring New England – Woodward, Yale University Art Gallery, 2009
Frame, Telephone, 1937 & Western Motel – Hopper , Yale University Art Gallery, 2009
Frame and Shadow of Pavlova and Novikoff in “La Peri” – Hoffman, Yale University Art Gallery, 2009
Frame and Spear Thrower – Manship, In the Adirondacks- Innes, Yale University Art Gallery, 2009
Frame and Shadow of Headdress – Nigeria and Gaius Caesar, Yale University Art Gallery, 2009
Frame, Spoon, 1725-35, Half a Glass of Water – Assael, Yale University Art Gallery, 2009
Landscape and Figure, Lazaro Galdiano Museum, Madrid, Spain, 2009
Anne of Austria and Anatomia, Lazaro Galdiano Museum, Madrid, Spain, 2009
Museum Steps, 2014
Composite Picture of Flower Painting, 2014
Mirror In Gallery, 2014
Four Galleries, 2014
Painting and Sculpture, 2014
Three Hands, 2014
Two Paintings In One, 2014
Sculpture and Painting, 2014
Composite Picture of Still Life Painting, 2014
Three Galleries, 2014
Two Paintings In One, 2014
Frames From Three Museums, 2014
The Metropolitan Opera
In some ways I feel that photography involves a kind of theater. Photographs take things from the real world and convert them into two-dimensional, make-believe pictures. This transformational process that is embedded in photography itself is what, I think, theater also attempts to achieve visually. At the Metropolitan Opera, I was interested in showing the behind-the-scenes architecture of illusion, which, in its own inventive way, gives audiences that feeling of transportation of being in a believable world.
The Metropolitan Opera: Carmen Set I, 2005
Grand Theatre Del Liceu Box, 2005
The Met – La Traviata Maquette I, 2005
The Metropolitan Opera: Romeo and Juliet Set, 2005
The Metropolitan Opera: Figaro Dress, 2005
The Metropolitan Opera: Manon Building Facades, 2005
The Metropolitan Opera: Das Rheingold, 2005
The Metropolitan Opera: Dress, 2005
The Metropolitan Opera: Magic Flute, 2005
The Metropolitan Opera: La Traviata Maquette II, 2005