kayl parker

jaclyn elizabeth and i have had a few classes together over the past year, making one thing very clear to me: not only is she one of the most dedicated photographers, but she is also one of the only people i’ve seen at saic who understands how to produce a steady and consistent body of work. her images, often picturing young women, draw the viewer in, regardless of the content, due to the pure beauty of the subject depicted.

on closer examination however, these young women come off as completely apathetic. placed in unnerving situations, her models continue to give off a dead look of unawareness, or more appropriately a look that tells the audience that they have been completely desensitized by the situations they have participated in, and now, all they can do is inhabit that picture frame and remain martyrs in place of the viewers.

the young women are always depicted as beautiful; somehow jackie knows how to make human skin look like the loveliest texture in the world. they also play a tense role: each is dressed in a white dress, the symbol of innocence, but each is also participating in a role that is less than innocent and hardly beautiful at that. jackie plays off the ideas of beauty and women, creating scenes to make the viewer uneasy. though they are wildly narrative, she does not box us in. the story is obvious, but also loose, requiring a sufficient amount of interpretation from its audience. and in this way, the photographer forces us to also participate in the grotesque acts within the picture. we are all enslaved by the image, photographer, models and viewers alike.

“but you must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply as a strange lurid fragment from some jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful scene from webster, or ford, or cyril tourneur. The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died.” “the quivering, ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.” (quotes from oscar wilde’s the picture of dorian gray.)

kim holtermand’s photography is beautiful; it’s simple, beautiful and breathtaking. her use of monochromatic color is amazing. i can’t get enough of her ghostlike imagery and symmetry visible in all her photographs. this is the kind of art i would rave about, buy and look at everyday. holtermand relies on a strong meta-narrative of similar series, making all of her photos stream well as an entire portfolio. i’m in love with the slight uneasiness and discomfort reading through the photographs that also emit calmness and clarity to the viewer simultaneously. very few photographers have the ability to capture conflicting moods in their work, especially when the object they are recording aren’t manmade but something completely organic and natural. i could rave about her photography all day, but i think that the images have the ability to speak for themselves.

kim holtermand brought to my attention by sixohthree 
kp