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She shows us things we’re not supposed to see,
takes us places we’re not supposed to go and she
draws no moral equivalencies in the images. Hers
is not a judgemental eye, but rather a very innocent
one, which often appears to be seeing these
moments, these things for the first time. This is what makes great art great ; it allows us to see anew and
make new connections. This is , above all, not about
the photographer as voyeur, but it is all about the
power and elusive nature of these moments...the
decaying cities, the decaying industrial cores and,
maybe even,the decaying belief systems. There’s
a sense of foreboding to these images, but also a
sense of the sacred and profane seen as one.
There is a feeling too about human ideals, the
higher part of us... our souls. This can be seen in
the images of the National Cathedral on the day
of the Pentagon memorial service ( with a sun so
bright, the print seems otherworldly) and in the
domes of the mosques, and at the Lincoln
Memorial with the American Constitution etched
in stone and also the photographs of missing
loved ones which were hanging all over New York
City after 9/11. These are things that inform and
give meaning to our lives and there is an imprint
of some kind of longing in them. This show will
likely haunt you for a while, and Lowe is at the
height of her powers as an artist, both technically
and philosophically. This makes for a potent experience. |
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ainter
and photographer, Ming C. Lowe,
found herself in a hotel room directly across
from the White House on 9/11. This then
began an unexpected photographic exodus
of sorts. She took photographs of the
Secret Service on the roof of the White House,
the President’s helicopter getting ready to
land (with smoke from the Pentagon billowing in the
background), and then went on to New York and
managed to get in to Ground Zero and take pictures
there. Lowe thought a lot about not wanting to exploit
Ground Zero imagery and about where her travels
had taken her over the years : The young girl (21)
who shot pictures of St. Francis of Assiss’s tomb
(shooting from the hip in a place where no
photography is EVER allowed and where the
monks have kept candles burning continuously
since Assissi’s death); The single woman with a
camera prowling the eerie night streets and scenes
of Egypt and Morocco; Coming upon a strange
American militia practise in an abandoned prison
yard in Idaho... Slowly, the imagery for Here and
There. 9/11 began to take shape as a poetic whole.
There’s a mystery to these photographs, just as there
is a mystery to the images of steel mills, quarries,
and mines that Lowe showed last year in work
representing her first foray into digital photography.
These photographs have the quality of Lowe’s
industrial paintings, but are somehow heightened,
perhaps simply because they are photographs.
Lowe plays with these ideas. She also plays with
the sense that it is sometimes hard to tell exactly
what the original image is, and many times they
appear to be something they’re not.
The paradoxical always is subtly lurking in the
background of Lowe’s work.