Artist Statement:

Over the past year or so, I seem to be choosing to photograph entangled trees, vines, almost impenetrable thickets of growth. For decades my photographs have offered a feeling of space, often of groundlessness, of a vast sky or open water, or at least an expansive horizon. Now they are quite different. Why? What am I looking at? What am I trying to see? Or describe? 

As artists in a member-run gallery, we often have talked about showing drawings and works in progress. As a photographer, I always objected, because, in my experience, a photographer’s works in progress are really stacks and piles of bad photographs, unsuccessful attempts to describe whatever it was that made you lift the camera to your eye and frame the shot. 

With this selection of prints, I am showing work about which I am uncertain – truly work in progress. Some of these images likely would have been more successful if I had a tripod along on my walk or exploration, but usually I don’t. Technically they are not always successful, but nonetheless they are up on a wall to look at. Putting prints up on my studio wall, pinned to a sheet of homosote, is how I have always learned whether they are “good” enough, whether they are successful. And, over time – months and months of looking at them - what it is that I am trying to communicate. 

This work might be something about the concept of entanglement, which scientists and climate activists use to describe the complexity of this planet; that everything we do, everything that all of us do, everything that the earth does, is completely entangled, interdependent, inseparable. No matter our intention, we are inextricably entangled in the harm that occurs, just by living on the earth. I also look at these images as potential messages from the earth – what is she trying to tell us?

I expect to know and understand more about these photographs after they have been on the walls of the gallery for a month. I may ask the viewers for help.

Cate McQuaid’s review of I Know I’m Looking at Something

Press release

More information about Mary Lang is available here:

Mary Lang Bio

Mary Lang

Mary Lang — Kingston Gallery

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