Time, time, time
See what’s become of me
Seasons change with the scenery
Weavin’ time in a tapestry
Won’t you stop and remember me?
~Paul Simon
By Suzanne Révy
Time is of the essence. Photography’s relationship to time is multifaceted, from long and short shutter speeds to the moment a sensor or film is exposed to light. Then, interestingly, the resulting photograph takes on a life of its own. It can become an historic document or a reminder of a loved one who has passed on. And every time we gaze at an old photograph, we somehow bring the thing photographed into the present. The Danforth Art Museum’s current slate of shows, including Sandra Matthews’ Unearthing and Jennifer Davis Carey and Scarlett Hoey’s Not a Story to Pass On, explore past, present and time in profoundly moving ways. A series of photograms by Madge Evers and a selection of the Museum’s recent photography acquisitions are also on view through June 2nd, 2024.

“Unearthing” a retrospective exhibition by Sandra Matthews on view at the Danforth Art Museum, Framingham. (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)

Feature Image: “Helen with children (Ibi center) in 1930/ Ibi in 2010, 2011” by Sandra Matthews from series Present Moments, courtesy of the artist and the Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham.
In a retrospective, Sandra Matthews presents five bodies of work made from the 1980’s to the present. Each series reveals evidence of the passing of time. In a group of large black and white collaged portraits, Matthews compares pictures of the same person or generations of a family made years or even decades apart. Several of them are made in personal spaces or in the landscape, but all consider the unfolding seasons of life. One particularly striking image is a vintage picture of the artist’s mother, Ibi, as a child in the center alongside a more recent portrait of her mother. In others, viewers will see aging faces or growing children collaged atop newspaper print. Not only do our bodies show the ravages of time, but the newspapers can mark time in their own way.

From the series Family Panoramas by Sandra Matthews in Unearthing, courtesy of the artist and the Danforth Museum, Framingham.

From the series Animal Vegetable Mineral by Sandra Matthews in Unearthing, courtesy of the artist and the Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA.
Similarly, Matthews uses collage to insert small children or babies into color panoramic pictures that emphasize a child’s fragility when confronted by the wider world. Our children will inherit this earth. More recently, she continues to employ a panoramic shape in diptychs that investigate the ravages of time on corporeal bodies as they return to the earth after death. These pictures are both beautiful and unsettling.

“Occupying Massachusetts” by Sandra Matthews from the exhibition Unearthing on view at the Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, MA (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)
Matthews also explores place and gives deep consideration to who may have lived or worked in a particular location hundreds of years before she made her pictures. In two distinct projects, Matthews uses contrasting photographic tools to investigate the history of human habitation in Massachusetts. In one, Occupying Massachusetts, she presents color photographs in a salon style installation of landmarks, structures, churches that sit on lands that belonged to indigenous peoples before Europeans arrived in the 17th century. In another, Homeland Scrolls, she embeds words into collaged landscapes composed of three different places. These layered black and white photographs are imbued with an evocative sense of history and a foreboding sense of the future.

“Buried, Unearthed, Dispersed” by Sandra Matthews, from Unearthing, courtesy of the artist and the Danforth Ar Museum, Framingham, MA.

“The Trees Bear Witness” by Jennifer Davis Carey, from Not a Story to Pass On at the Danforth Art Museum, Framingham, MA. (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)
Not a Story to Pass On by artists Jennifer Davis Carey and Scarlett Hooey use archives to delve into the history and impact of enslavement. Carey’s striking The Trees Bear Witness appropriates pictures of lynching in an enameled box with a silhouetted tree in a stark reminder of the violence in the years following the Civil War. Influenced by Betye Saar and Joseph Cornell, she also uses images of her grandmother in several assemblages that preserve the stories of early 20th century Black life in her series American Histories. In Redemption, Carey appropriates the daguerrotypes made by Joseph T. Zealy for Harvard professor Louis Agassiz in the 19th century for a dubious study to “prove” the inferiority of Black people. Photographed as mere specimens to be studied, Carey overlays clothes on the portraits to emphasize their faces and restore their dignity and humanity.

“Jack and Diana in Daguerrotype Case” by Jennifer Davis Carey, from the series Redemption, courtesy of the artist and the Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, MA

“In Plain Sight” by Scarlett Hoey, from Not a Story to Pass On at the Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham. (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)
Hoey explores the meaning of colonial era headstones to grapple with incomplete histories. She researches the enslaved people buried in several central Massachusetts burial grounds. Seeking insight into their roots and the dynamics of the relationships they had with their enslavers, Hoey sheds light on the role that the transatlantic slave trade played in the colonial history of Worcester and Worcester County. A QR code brings visitors more details of the project. Both artists are telling a more complete history– histories that should not be overlooked, lest we repeat the injustices they highlight.

“Bluets in June” by Madge Evers from the Harvest, Foraged, Found, courtesy of the artist and the Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA.
Be sure to check out Madge Evers sublime photograms of mushroom spores in the Harvest, Foraged, Found show. This work recalls Anna Atkins early cyanotype studies of botanicals, but Evers’ less formal arrangements and shadow play endow her abstractions with an otherworldly aura. And do not miss the new acquisitions, there is an amusing Weegee self-portrait that deserves a double take.
For more information: https://danforth.framingham.edu

“Self-Portrait” by Weegee from the exhibition Recent Acquisitions in Photography: The Litowitz Family Collection on new at the Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA. (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)