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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Sonya Luhm @ Dunn Bros. Coffee 34th/Hennepin
Wednesday 21 January @ 15:05:13 |
 by Will Conley
She says her exhibit has no theme. I say it has three themes: Minnesota, Brazil and Placeless. Really, in a certain way, all of these photographs are placeless.
There is a “Father Carrying a Child” across nameless filthy concrete sidewalks in St. Paul. Thousands of personal automobiles, buses and pedestrians course “Avenida Paulista” between endless towering office buildings in Sao Paulo. The line between unfathomable sea and purpling-to-black sky is indistinguishable as experienced from a boat at “Sunset - Port Side.”
Bare Back by Sonya Luhm
How many people are experiencing that tranquil expanse right now? How many people regularly move up and down urban avenues, always spawning in some direction or another for their livelihood? How many can feel the unforgiving hardness of that pavement in their bones, and an urge to protect loved ones from its inanimate cruelty? Those people lack unique place signifiers yet share the same experiential home.
Sonya Luhm’s facial portraits—there are five in all if you include the pile of piglets from St. Paul and the extreme close-up of someone’s hand cupping a tree frog from Park Rapids, Minnesota—recall the supposedly impersonal purity of the famous photographs of Diane Arbus. There is a psychological distance between subject and photographer that allows the New Yorkers in Arbus’ portraits to be themselves, almost as if she had shot them from 50 yards away with a high-resolution scope.
Tree Frog by Sonya Luhm
At first glance Luhm’s photograph “Baby” seems trite like a Pampers ad. Upon sincere observation, however, you come to appreciate the clarity, the sharpness, the richness of light and shadow and a sense that Luhm meant to show us that young individual’s bright eyes as they are when no one is present—not even a photographer. That sort of specificity of subject—it’s not a baby, it’s that baby—would never pass muster with an advertising firm looking to portray “the average baby.” Same goes for the anonymous “Bare Back”—its positioning and focus are deliberate enough to make evident that that back belongs to somebody in particular.
Baby by Sonya Luhm
Obviously, Luhm’s preferred perspective is first person, with the exception of “Avenida Paulista” which was shot from 20 or 30 stories above the thoroughfare for an impression of third-person omniscience. She treats her very general subjects with a gentleness and skillcraft that will draw your initial attention. Then, only you can contemplate each of these 16 images, meditate in your way with them, and find your own fulfillment.
Through January. Dunn Bros. Coffee, 3348 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls. 612-822-3292.
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