Rebecca Nemser

Bernd and Hilla Bech­er pho­tographed blast fur­naces, water tow­ers, pow­er sta­tions, and oth­er indus­tri­al struc­tures, which they called “anony­mous sculp­ture.” I thought of this show again when I first read W.G. Sebald’s books — mys­te­ri­ous, elu­sive, and strange­ly moving.

The Boston Athenaeum, a Library with gra­cious high-ceilinged rooms adorned with columns and all kinds of Grae­co-Roman archi­tec­tur­al details, and filled with books and pic­tures, was built by 19th cen­tu­ry Bosto­ni­ans as a mod­ern tem­ple to Athena, God­dess of Wisdom. 

In LINDA CON­NOR’s cam­er­a’s mys­ti­cal eye, the world is filled with ancient sacred things. The same images repeat and recur in her body of work — spi­rals, veils, beams of light shin­ing into a dark place, open doors, closed eyes, hands — but each time you see them, they mean some­thing dif­fer­ent. Each time you see them, they mean some­thing more.

LOU JONES’s por­trait of a musi­cian shows a beau­ti­ful old woman with strong hands and a clear, untrou­bled face. You can feel that she’s lis­ten­ing to music; there’s a vision­ary gleam in her eyes. Her por­trait is jux­ta­posed with a fad­ed daguer­rotype of a 19th cen­tu­ry singer known as the Black Swan.

“It can be fright­en­ing, but that’s life,” said Doug. “Art is part of life,” said Mike. “It’s a real part — it’s the essence of life,” said Doug. “There’s no rea­son to make it per­fect,” says Doug. “We want to show the phys­i­cal nature,” said Mike. “The phys­i­cal nature,” said Doug. “Of every­thing, but in par­tic­u­lar, Art,” said Mike.

WEST­ON’s por­traits of friends and lovers are so intense that their souls seem to flick­er through their sen­si­tive faces and expres­sive hands. But West­on’s Nudes are seen in name­less frag­ments, as cool and smooth as mar­ble. You see their bod­ies, but their faces are turned away. 

MINOR WHITE’s pho­tographs con­vey a sense that behind the vis­i­ble world is anoth­er world — a world filled with mean­ing and mag­ic. He was fas­ci­nat­ed by pho­tog­ra­phy’s abil­i­ty to show what he called “things for what else they are.” He liked to quote the thir­teenth-cen­tu­ry Ger­man mys­tic Meis­ter Eck­hart: “The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.”

The peo­ple in the por­traits present anx­ious faces to the cam­era; hav­ing your pic­ture tak­en was a seri­ous busi­ness. The cam­era was enor­mous, bulky, and expen­sive; the process was time-con­sum­ing and mys­te­ri­ous. Sil­very and almost trans­par­ent, their del­i­cate faces float on the shim­mer­ing sil­ver plates like ghosts.