Let There Be Light

What Makes It Great? / Featured / July 25, 2019

By Suzanne Révy

Light has the ability to change the emotional tenor of a place. It shifts colors as it progresses around rooms and yards from sun up to sun down and into the night. A shaft of light bouncing off a wall might illuminate long forgotten books on a shelf or the diffused sunlight through curtains can endow a room with an ethereal glow. And it is not just the sun illuminating our world. The ambient light of the moon mutes and quiets the colors of the landscape, allowing nocturnal animals and humans to roam at night unseen. Eleanora Ronconi is a master at employing natural light in her photographs made in Argentina in a series called Serás mis ojos; Kay Kenny explores nights in southern New Hampshire and the desert southwest in her work titled Into the Night in the Middle of Nowhere. Both exhibitions are on view at the Griffin Museum of Photography through September 1st, 2019.

“Algunos Classicos” by Eleonora Ronconi, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Primera Comuncion” by Eleonora Ronconi, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

Over time, Eleonora Ronconi, an immigrant from Argentina living in Calfornia, was feeling untethered from her native identity. She sought to recapture the essence of her heritage by returning home to photograph. While there, she learned that an aunt had been diagnosed with Alzheimers, and her memories were fading. In her series, Serás mis ojos which translates from the Spanish to “You will be my eyes,” Ronconi set out to restore those memories. She turned her lens to the places and objects that held meaning for her and her aunt from her own childhood to recover a sense of herself that seemed lost. These graceful compositions bathed in warm light are full of love, but raise questions. Who wore that lacy Communion dress? Or drank from that delicate tea cup? As a viewer, of course, I can see my own grandmother sipping her tea from that cup. There is a humanity present in the details of these domestic scenes. In addition, Ronconi has installed a tape recorder so that visitors might record details from their childhood to create a dialog around the cultures in which we grew up. It is a positive way to engage in the conversation around our differences without adding to the rancorous rhetoric of our current political climate.

“La Taza de Irma” by Eleonora Ronconi, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Tent Meeting, NH” by Kay Kenny, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

“Orchard House” by Kay Kenny, courtesy of the artist and the Griffin Museum of Photography.

The night enfolds us into a serene blanket each evening. During the summer, when the nights are warm in New England, Kay Kenny would set up her camera to make long exposures in southern New Hampshire. She employed the ambient light of the moon and a flashlight to paint in color. At times, she might catch the lights of a passing vehicle or the light of an insomniac’s window. More recently she photographed in the desert southwest with its wide open skies to render the flora, fauna and rocky landscape with the gentle touch of her flashlight. Under the blanket of night, colors shift and change. We walk gently into the night as mists rise and animals quietly stalk their prey. Kenny offers viewers a rare treat: to witness the full dimensions of all that goes on at night.

Both artists employ light differently to reveal a sense of awe: for Ronconi, a reverence for home and reconnection through light and color, and for Kenny, the sweeping and surprising sights of the landscape at night. And both artists share an insight into the alluring and changing nature of light.