In the Mourning Light

Book Reviews / Featured / April 21, 2022

By Elin Spring

The Covid-19 pandemic has wrought global upheaval, spreading enough physical and spiritual devastation to last several lifetimes. It is no wonder that artists of every ilk have reacted with mournful expressions, sometimes unrelentingly so. It is a gifted artist whose work explores loss and transcends it to produce a book that achieves a sense of reclamation. We review four recent publications that find that delicate equilibrium between grief and hope: “Janus” by Birthe Piontek (Gnomic Book, 2021), “Yesterday” by Sal Taylor Kydd (Datz Press, 2021), “Still Breathing” by Julia Vandenoever (Gray Sky Press, 2022) and “Holding Time” by Catherine Panebianco (Yoffy Press, 2022).

“Orange_9891.tif 10:45:16 2020_02_19” from Janus by Birthe Piontek, courtesy of the artist.

In “Janus” (Gnomic Book, 2021), Birthe Piontek arranges fruits, vegetables and flowers into restrained concertinas with parts of her own body. The flora exhibit various stages of fertility, injury and decay. The natural light in her isolated pandemic studio is gentle, her graphic designs poetic, and the metaphors plentiful. Janus, the two-faced Roman god of transitions looks simultaneously to past and future, at beginnings and endings. By placing her ordinary body in dialog with objects harvested from the earth, Piontek draws an effective analogy to our kinship with the natural world. At the same time, her juxtapositions accentuate the inescapable clocks of our disparate lifecycles.

“Strawberries_0168.tif 11:38:01 2020 _03 _30” from Janus by Birthe Piontek, courtesy of the artist.

“Eggs_0418.tif 12:46:56 2020_02_02” from Janus by Birthe Piontek, courtesy of the artist.

With refined, sculptural compositions and mellifluous palette, Piontek explores visual parallels in natural transformations: her mature hands enfold a rotting orange; an elbow conjugates merrily with upturned strawberries; and on stockinged tiptoes, she hovers over two upright eggs. Occasionally, frames are absent the artist. In one, apples encased in ice are teetering on a ledge, dripping like an hourglass. There are plenty more and and less imperiled visions of our fragile and precarious condition, all brought with a refreshing sense of curiosity, pathos, and levity. Piontek’s compositions are prodigious in their subtlety, offering both a stoic and spirited assessment of the ways in which we adapt, mutate, grow, and decline every day.

“Apples_1284.tif 12:58:10 2020_02_09” from Janus by Birthe Piontek, courtesy of the artist.

“Twilight” from Yesterday by Sal Taylor Kydd, courtesy of the artist.

Sal Taylor Kydd’s “Yesterday” (Datz Press, 2021) alights like a whisper, soft and sensuous. A slim volume, its sentimentality is clear from the outset. Intimate and inviting sepia-toned, hand-pulled polymer photogravures printed on creamy paper set a tranquil tone. And indeed, “Yesterday” tells a tale of seeking solace. Kydd pursues it from garden to forest to home and back again, mostly through the footsteps of a dark young beauty’s enigmatic presence.

“Forward” from Yesterday by Sal Taylor Kydd, courtesy of the artist.

Establishing our viewpoint, the young woman is a serene voyeur. Often, she appears in focus, looking away, while her surroundings swirl, the only visual clue to Kydd’s plaintive end poem. In it, we learn the underpinnings that motivated this psychological pilgrimage back to the garden, where Kydd admits to having “forgotten for a moment, that the world was breaking, and the people were dying.”

“Solace” from Yesterday by Sal Taylor Kydd, courtesy of the artist.

I have seen so much work mining interior worlds become cloying, but Kydd’s never does. Although her touch is light, the tone is somber. In elegant, spare compositions, textures convey feeling, shallow depth of field focusses attention, light transmits breathing space, and nature endows a cloak of security. Kydd’s frames keep drawing us “to the sweet now of doing,” in ethereal allusions to a time and place where hope floats.

“Offered” from Yesterday by Sal Taylor Kydd, courtesy of the artist.

From Still Breathing by Julia Vandenoever, courtesy of the artist.

Julia Vandenoever’s “Still Breathing” (Gray Sky Press, 2022) is a response to grief, a visual memoir linking departed family members to a life she now shares with her children. Color photographs focussing on portions of their young bodies, their natural surroundings in Colorado and of those elements interacting, set a tenor of hopefulness. Both her title and the lead photograph of Vandenoever’s daughter with fingers crossed behind her back make clear the artist’s message. The idea of surviving is evinced in mournful images, too, like a broken window and an angry scab on her child’s skin. These are joined by a sprinkling of vintage family photographs and keepsakes, which drop scrapbook-like hints to the artist’s memories.

From Still Breathing by Julia Vandenoever, courtesy of the artist.

From Still Breathing by Julia Vandenoever, courtesy of the artist.

Vandenoever’s images derive strength from her mastery of color and light. The simple clarity of her compositions is reminiscent of Sal Taylor Kydd, who is one of her mentors. This lucidity makes Vandenoever’s abundant use of symbolism very effective. There is no wondering that the shed snakeskin draped over a tree branch represents a new beginning, or that the child with hands covered in vintage rings is channeling her maternal legacy. Vandenoever’s delicate balance between bitter and sweet builds a visually cohesive, emotionally touching narrative of yearning and reverence for familial bonds.

From Still Breathing by Julia Vandenoever, courtesy of the artist.

From Holding Time by Catherine Panebianco, courtesy of the artist.

Catherine Panebianco’s “Holding Time” (Yoffy Press, 2022) is both a literal and figurative homage to a lost era. In tribute to her father, she appropriated his signature collection of Kodachrome slides from decades-past family holidays, celebrations, travelogs and mundane domestic scenes. Holding each aloft before a backdrop today, Panebianco unifies the two elements into a graphic and spiritual whole. Meticulous, colorful and engaging on multiple levels, Panebianco brings a tricky performance to fruition with creative flair.

From Holding Time by Catherine Panebianco, courtesy of the artist.

From Holding Time by Catherine Panebianco, courtesy of the artist.

For each composition, Panebianco arranges a Kodachrome slide so that scale, orientation, alignment, even palette, seamlessly blend into a contemporary background scenario. Although the book adheres to a single idea, the images are far from a typology. True, each contains a slide with the artist’s left hand suspending it, but the similarities end there. Each scene is different, calling up a unique memory that feels eerily recognizable. The all-too-typical poses, gestures and activities pictured transcend ethnic and cultural definition, rendering the subjects difficult to distinguish but easy to identify. Who does not have a photo of their family sitting on the front steps or at the holiday dinner table? “Holding Time” embraces nostalgia with poise, inviting viewers into an intimate narrative that achieves a sense of collective family history.

From Holding Time by Catherine Panebianco, courtesy of the artist.

These reconciliations with our mortality are as lyrical as they are metaphoric; three of the four include poetry by the photographers. In “Janus,” Birthe Piontek mines analogies in the transience of all nature’s progeny. In “Yesterday,” Sal Taylor Kydd finds reprieve from the pandemic’s devastation by seeking solace in nature. In “Still Breathing,” Julia Vandenoever narrates a tale of survivorship, navigating a path forward through her children. In “Holding Time,” Catherine Panebianco unifies past and present in a tribute to her family history. Each of these photographers has discovered a way to let inspiration triumph over despair, greeting both the mourning and the light.

“Janus” by Birthe Piontek, Gnomic Book, 2021: https://gnomicbook.com/products/janus

“Yesterday” by Sal Taylor Kydd, Datz Press, 2021: http://www.saltaylorkydd.com/books/yesterday

“Still Breathing” by Julia Vandenoever, Gray Sky Press, 2022: https://grayskypress.bigcartel.com/product/still-breathing

“Holding Time” by Catherine Panebianco, Yoffy Press, 2022: http://www.catherinepanebianco.com/