In the Shadows

What Makes It Great? / Featured / June 9, 2021

By Suzanne Révy

During the pandemic, everyone seemed to go underground, including museums. The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA took a dive into their photographic and print collections and surfaced with an unusual theme. “What We Do in the Shadows” explores the hidden structures of government, the unnoticed impacts of climate change, and the lives of those in the margins. At once captivating, challenging and moving, the exhibition will be on view through September 12th, 2021.

“Present Day Refugee with Dormitory Ship ‘Flotel Europa'” 1995 by Shimon Attie from the series Portraits of Exile, gift of Cathy England, courtesy of the deCordova Museum Sculpture Park and Museum.

The exhibit opens with a photograph of a Shimon Attie light box featuring the image of a WWII era Jewish refugee submerged in the Borsgraven Canal in Copenhagen. The site-specific installation from 1995 queried the Danish response to refugees who were saved from the Nazis in the forties, compared with their far less welcoming response in the 90’s when the Danish government enacted laws to evict asylum seekers and refugees from their homes. Attie has described this work as “a kind of peeling back the wallpaper of today to reveal the histories buried underneath.” Seeking and revealing the underbelly of power structures and the cultural shifts that allow for those in the margins to remain hidden is the focus of this exhibition. The artists and photographers featured here extend their imagery beyond mere visual concerns into engaged activism, seeking to peer behind veils of secrecy.

“Ed ‘Sonny’ Kennedy, June 1992, executed” by Lou Jones, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the artist and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.

From the portfolio Bedlam by Marcus Halevi, installation photograph by Suzanne Révy

For example, Lou Jones and Marcus Halevi look deep into the eyes of people thrown away by civil society. In a mental institution in Romania where, arguably, the mental health of patients worsened under the burdens their brutal treatments, Halevi’s searing black and white pictures shed light on human rights abuses without revealing the details or identity of of those pictured. The work raises questions around the transactions that occur between a photographer and a sitter. Can we shed light on abuse without further exploiting victims of it? Likewise, Lou Jones portrays those living on death row in carefully crafted portraits. As a teen, Jones argued with his father over the issue of the death penalty, so he resolved to understand it better by photographing and interviewing twenty-seven inmates between 1985 and 1999. Eight of his black and white portraits are included alongside a label which details their status. Unlike Halevi, Jones identifies his sitters and their crimes, which offer viewers an opportunity to see them as complex human beings rather than mere statistics or worse… something to be discarded.

“Burned Timber, Fourth of July Creek” 2005 by Laura McPhee, C-print, gift of the artist and Carroll & Sons, courtesy of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.

Two photographs from the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho taken in 2005 (left) and 2007 (right) by Laura McPhee, installation photograph by Suzanne Révy

(Featured Image) “Naval weapons testing base, abandoned, the Salton Sea, California” 1989 by Barbara Norfleet, from The Landscape of the Cold War Portfolio, gift of Arlette and Gus Kayafas, courtesy of the artist and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.

U.S. military sites photographed by Barbara Norfleet from The Landscape of the Cold War Portfolio, installation of eight gelatin silver prints photographed by Suzanne Révy.

Barbara Norfleet and Laura McPhee examine the impact of human intervention on the landscape. In the late 1980’s Norfleet photographed military facilities across the American west which served as weapons test sites between 1945 and 1991. Her black and white prints expose the imprints left on the land in eerie compositions featuring unusual structures defying the harsh elements. The industrial complex around war is detrimental to the earth, and in turn, threatens humanity not only by killing and maiming people in war, but by contributing to climate change. Alarming fluctuations in weather is evidence of ecosystems that are out of balance. Violent storms can lead to vast wild fires in the western states where Laura McPhee considers mankind’s interference in the destructive and regenerative properties of nature. Her two prints taken two years apart in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho detail the immediate impact of fire in a forest and its hopeful rebirth. It may not always be apparent, but her pictures remind us that we are testing the limits of our earth’s resilience and its capacity to sustain us.

“Visualize This” (top) by Nancy Burson and “Washington Video Game: Poker Night at the Pentagon” 1981 by Warrington Colescott, installation photographed by Suzanne Révy

From Indian IV Suite, 1972 by Leonard Baskin, installation photograph courtesy of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.

The balance of the show features prints from artists and art collectives who addressed and advocated for social change. Nancy Burson’s image of the AIDS virus, Leonard Baskin’s graphic portraits of 19th century American Indian chieftains, and an impressive salon style presentation of a portfolio of prints by the late ’60’s era collective called Artists Against Racism and War (AARW) serve to underscore the growing advocacy among artists in the late 20th century. In addition, the deCordova presents Sonya Clark’s potent “Monumental Cloth” which contemplates the role of a kitchen towel in ending the American Civil War and her smaller exhibition “Heavenly Bound.” The latter opens with a hallway of large vinyl reproductions of photographic portraits of former slaves such as Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth and Richard Avedon’s “William Casby, born into Slavery, Algiers Louisiana,” all of which guide visitors into two smaller galleries where Clark considers the constellations in the night sky, and how they aided those fleeing enslavement through the underground railroad.