Impression is an archive of photos captured during a ten-month long public installation in which participants were invited to sit in front of a mirror, reflect, look into their own eyes, lean in for a kiss, and knowingly be photographed.

The imagery in this collection is an experiment in human nature: showing people in various expressions of joy, disgust, exhibitionism, love, embarrassment, and confusion. Artists Janet Creekmore and Ben Jason Neal use a low-tech HD camera and high-tech, pixel-sensitive software for the project. This conceptual, social-practice work pushes boundaries and tests the limits of what people are willing to do in a public or a private space, evoking a voyeuristic feeling in the viewer, where the documentation of the experience and the photographic results explores ideas of sexuality, gender, self, cultures and identity.

Photographer Tina Gutierrez and designer Da’Mon Butler collaborate in re-Adorned | Catharsis to explore the cultural memories of their respective Cuban-Appalachian and African-American heritage and experience. This series of studio photographs seeks to reincorporate items and people who have been omitted from traditional art history texts and mainstream fashion, while capturing a cathartic human story reinterpreted with each telling and each viewing.

Alongside the photographs, Butler (whose followers know him as NOMAD3176—“Nomad” being his first name backward and “3176” reflecting his birthdate of March 17, 1966) presents a selection of adornments that translate historical aspects of tribal African ornamentation in found and unexpected materials. A central influence in the design is the landfill—our consumption, the fingerprint of our existence. Butler’s archival re-ordering of materials inspires a cultural memory of ancestral African attire and asks all wearers, particularly African-American men, to re-order their personal archive of experience to transcend the burden of external history and its current consequence. By re-appropriating discarded, found materials into fine art fashion adornments, Butler gives new importance to the items, just as adorning the figure gives an importance to the wearer’s identity and projection of personality.

Gutierrez’s photographs capture the cause and effect relationship between Butler’s adornments and the wearer—combining fashion, movement, and photographic impact to present a dramatic series that, like theater, involves the viewer in the human struggle for identity and understanding. It is through the revelatory presentation of the photographs that together Gutierrez and Butler ask viewers to re-see the materials, re-see people, and re-see their world.

Also On View: View photography and artwork on display for the upcoming production of “1984” by George Orwell, a new play by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillian. FotoFocus attendees receive a discount on tickets to this production. Visit cincyshakes.com for more information.

This two-person show features the work of two Cincinnati-based photographers: Linda Gillings and Tina Gutierrez. Capturing people in their natural surroundings, be it through candid photography or a more interactive technique, is how Linda Gillings approaches street photography. Behind each expression, mannerism, or look is a story—a story she tries to capture about who the subject is and what they communicate in that moment.

Tina Gutierrez’s practice is grounded in her study of art, dance, fashion, and especially music. Her passion for music began at a very early age and influences the way she composes the human figure. Her affinity for the renaissance and baroque periods in particular extends beyond music into the visual world, specifically sculpture. Depicting classical balance and beauty in the human form is a hallmark of Gutierrez’s work. Her abstract and underwater series featuring dancers from the Cincinnati Ballet illustrates this delicate balance, as the figures appear to defy gravity behind the lens.

Archives contain precious artifacts of the past, but even in the contemporary digital age we are fascinated with the nature of the physical object. We find pleasure in the tactile and enduring feel of the artifacts—photographs, prints, and books created by those before us. “Gathering Kokoro” Orihon Book explores the cross currents of cultural sensibilities from the Japanese homeland of artist Mayako Nakamura and that of Tony DeVarco from the United States.

Recasting digital photos, photomontages, and sketches into a delicate artifact, the collaborative artwork is created in the ancient style of an ‘Orihon’ book (‘ori’ means fold, ‘hon’ book). Paying homage to the ancient Asian tradition of bookmaking as a “folding scroll,” “Gathering Kokoro” is printed in Japanese on one side and English on the other—its pages open up concertina style, featuring a series of DeVarco’s photographs and Nakamura’s sketches printed on delicate mulberry paper.

Archivist and curator Bonnie DeVarco designed the interior of the book to present an unfolding story in the Japanese style of Orihon with folds sewn using the “stabbed” binding technique. As an artwork at once vintage and familiar, the book cover and case of “Gathering Kokoro” are designed and bound by master bookmaker and artist Judith Serling-Sturm and include obi cloth painted by Nakamura. This large-scale artwork, nearly ten feet long, is printed as one long scroll that captures the careful stages of Mayako donning her kimono and the travels of the two artists in June of 2017.