On September 8, 2022, the Griffin Museum of Photography will open a solo exhibition of works by artist Rachel Portesi, featuring a selection of collodion tintypes that examine the complexities of the female experience— including nuances of sexuality, motherhood, aging, and choice— through whimsical staged portraits taken on vintage large-format cameras.
A selection of 8 x 10 polaroids will also be on display as well as 3D viewmasters with video footage of her process, which includes a hours-long process of concocting elaborate hair sculptures, constructed in her studio, representing change and self-reflection.
"These photographs are part of an ongoing series of 'hair portraits,'" Portesi says. "They use wet plate collodion tintype, Polaroids, film, and 3-d imagery to explore the nuanced transitions in female identity related to motherhood, aging, and choice as well as the intersection of identity and femininity with the physical world. As I engaged with this new mode, my models became conduits of self-reflection–a way to look at the confines of my chosen female role from the outside. And there I observed a post-maternal kind of strength wholly different from the role I’d inhabited before motherhood. Looking at them now, these images on the wall, photographs of elaborate hair sculptures constructed in my studio to change. Parts of myself I choose to leave behind. Others I bring with me."
