Poetic Gaps: Opacity in the Photographic Imprint 

In his writings, Martinican poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant asserts that all people have the right to opacity – to remain elusive and partially hidden. Additionally, he conceptualizes ‘poetics’ as a set of in flux relations that bridges the gap between the known and the unknown. Poetic Gaps: Opacity in the Photographic Imprint uses these claims as a speculative prompt. Taking Newcomb Art Museum’s photographic collection as a point of departure, and extending into the realms of sculpture and installation, this exhibition follows a poetic and relational logic of that which refuses to be fully ‘caught,’ or fully known, within the photographic frame.   

The artworks gathered here feature subjects, objects, and landscapes that push against the boundaries of the traditional photographic medium (which seeks to freeze a moment in time and capture a likeness fully). The play between presence and absence takes center stage. Denying the viewer the option of explicit narrative, photography is used instead as a means to consider the precarious nature of ‘capturing’ a subject, landscape, or moment in time completely.  

Organized into a series of vignettes, Poetic Gaps asks: what happens beyond the photographic frame? What precedes and outlasts it? What keeps itself hidden and remains unseen?    

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Funding support for all exhibitions at Newcomb Art Museum comes from Ernestine Bass Hopkins Fund, Ellen Conlon Fund, Ruth Dermody Sterling Fund, and Katherine Steinmayer McLean, and Jane Whipple Green Fund. Partial program support comes from the Dorothy Beckemeyer Skau Art and Music Fund from The Newcomb Institute.