In the wake of a tornado that scattered the physical symbols of her past, the American photographer Leslie Hanes has reconstructed some of the pieces she recovered from the water in her Chambers of Illusion. More generally, she has constructed her own “search for lost time.” The images revive the promise of another horizon, of a new adventure that is both visual and existential. They open new doors and offer time for memory and time for reflection. This is why the image is never devoid of substance and makes it possible to reanimate substances that have been reduced to ghostly existence.
Every photograph is less an imparting than an embodying in the act of a revolt against forgetting and misunderstanding. All that remains and what the photographer exhumes turns into a struggle against time; a short treatise on wisdom. Lifeless objects are unabashedly expanded, but in a roundabout way that unsettles our gaze through a sort of minimalism. Everything is present in a crude, but never exhibitionist, way. Every image comes to enclose a surprise, often not without a surrealist flavor. Through a paradoxical effect of “overlay,” the image holds the delights of a double fold. Strange flowers of the Apocalypse shoot forth from a discreetly militant source of inspiration. It’s a way of fighting against time and compelling the viewer’s imagination to imagine even more.
Jean-Paul Gavard-Perret
Jean-Paul Gavard-Perret is a poet, critic, and associate professor in communication at Université de Savoie in France.
Leslie Hanes, Chambers of Illusion
January 3 to February 3, 2018
Soho Photo Gallery
15 White St
New York, NY 10013
USA
