Each month the PRC’s Northeast Exposure Online shares the work of an emerging New England photographer. Last November Leah Fasten was featured. Fasten’s project-in-process was made up of portraits of her young son — images “investigating the anticipation and awe of watching my son, Zach, on the cusp of independence.”
I always think it’s interesting to see what happens when artists go about something as natural and everyday-photographer as taking photos of their children.
The first time I saw Abelardo Morrell’s childhood images, I recognized the serene black and white, the cleverness of form and light. Despite the very different subject matter, all that made Morrell’s familiar camera obscura and book photographs a wonder — it was all still in there, in these family portraits. But, there is something different going on when one’s own family is the subject. You can see it here.
There is perhaps nothing more personal than a photographer lending his so-often-shared view of the world to images of his children.
[Julian and Brady Sitting by Abelardo Morrell]
Fasten’s images aren’t so far off from your backyard snapshots. But there is something that much more deliberate about them; they’re square and distant and framed. There is certainly this sense of just what she says in her statement… the watching of this person as he negotiates the bit of world he has to explore in front of him (but within the watchful eyes of his caretaker). The image of Zach alone on a swing could have come across as deeply melancholy, but no, I feel like we know mom isn’t far away.
Granted, Fasten’s Zach pictures aren’t all taken quite from this perspective of protective distance. The breathtaking image Hair [below, top] is wondrous and bold, and not so different from the porcelain youths of Loretta Lux‘s photo-paintings [as in The Blue Dress, below, bottom].
But Fasten’s child is not some photographic statue. That’s an unfiltered blast of light, revealing real skin and hair, and a clutter of out-of-focus beach-goers trotting about the background.
This balance between intimacy and distance, though, I think is particularly noteworthy. It is probably a space only a parent could inhabit.
And maybe it’s the haircut or the sweaters, but there’s this wonderful timeless everychild in Morrell and Fasten’s kids and how they are portrayed. I am certain I had that haircut once, or lack thereof, my hair bushy and unkempt. I feel like I know how that sweater feels, and you probably do to.
Maybe most remarkable, the images really convey the persistent shortness of being so young. It’s marvelous.
And again, maybe its the haircut. But I can’t help think of young Danny in The Shining, looking at these young people. Innocent but not innocuously so. Inhabiting shortness. Navigating the perimeter of the boundaries our parents have set, and brushing up against the dangers of going a step too far.