FIVE FOCAL POINTS TO PONDER AT HESS

by Brian Goslow

In compiling the lineup of photographers that would make “Inventory of Reverie,” curator Rachel Loischild gave participants the option of being as experimental or not as they wanted to be. “It turned into a show that really touches on history and artifact and combines them with a very subtle feminist undertone that runs through all of the work,” she said. “Everything follows the thread of photography, but in very different forms.”

That starts with her own work. Loischild normally exhibits her own photographs, whether of the natural world or remnants of everyday life, new and old, but for this show at Pine Manor  where she is a photography professor  she utilizes studio portraits of brides from the 1920s through ‘50s that she has found on eBay, Etsy and at estate sales, junk sales, tag sales or wherever else she could find them. “I’ve always loved the aesthetic of the varied vintage brides and their studio portraiture,” she explained.

She was inspired by her own wedding this past July. “It was very stressful trying to navigate what ‘The Bride’ meant, what I wanted to be, and the all-important dress  this crazy icon of the wedding,” Loischild explained. “I had to choose a wedding dress and I had a lot of trouble with that, and through this archive of bridal portraits that I’ve amassed, I thought I’d be able to figure out and own the concept of every bride  I just wanted to be every bride.”

Loischild calls Molly Lamb, “the biggest up-and-comer of this particular show,” based on her just having been picked up by the Rick Wester Fine Art Gallery in New York City and having exhibited her work in the Review Santa Fe Photo Festival  self-billed as “the premier juried portfolio review event in the world”  this past June.

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