The exhibition I am reviewing is Homegrown by Julie Blackmoon a photographer from Springfield, Missouri. It is located at the Robert Mann Gallery 525 West 26th Street Chelsea, New York. It is located in midtown Manhattan on the west side, where a lot of galleries were located. All of her pieces are set in a typical suburban american city. Most of her subjects are children. The curator mentioned that most of the subjects shown are Julie’s nephews or their friends.
The images are all well composed and kept my focus for quite a while. Each of them tells a story and has many different details to look at.The pictures include interesting scenes presenting casual midwestern town life. Additional pictures show her adolescent subjects hanging out in the house or on the porch, or within other common scenes like a colorful yard sale or a haunting camp fire.
One of the most impressive images was inspired by Abbey Road, the famous Beatles album cover. The parallels to the original are striking. The picture shows five young girls crossing the street on a crosswalk in the foreground. The background shows a typical suburban street with houses and front yards on either side. I love the composition of this photo and all of the small details that draw your attention and keep your eyes wandering around the picture.
While the Abbey Road photograph is perhaps the most resonant, others are not to a lesser extent remarkable. They include a picture which displays the delivery of a new chair. This chair is in the center of the picture on ramp of a delivery truck, ready to be brought into the house. The old chair is already outside with a sign on it, for sale for $20. Again story and composition play well together to keep your attention in the frame for a long time.
Another picture I liked shows a movie night in a garden. The grass is covered with sheets, and children are all over the place. It looks like a back yard that has been turned into a little movie theater, and there is a screen spanned where a movie is being projected. What I especially liked about this picture was that everybody was well lit enough to see all the interesting details, even though it is in the evening. There is also a little child in the way of the projection so that you see parts of the movie on his face.
What I really liked about the exhibition that every image tells a story. I’m still not sure if these pieces are shots taken in moment, or well thought out and composed. While the Abbey Road picture seems to be obviously made up, others could just be spontaneous shots.
Especially in this large dimension, the prints look like they are painted with oil colors. I wondered more than once about this abstract look that Julie Blackmoon manages to put in her pictures. The colors of the pictures are amazingly adorable and create astonishing surreal atmospheres. The photographer does a great job in capturing the feeling of that moment and creating beautiful palettes within her pieces.