Laura Letinsky

An exhibition of new photographs by Laura Letinsky will be on view at Yancey Richardson from May 22 through July 3, 2024. Letinsky is known for deconstructing the traditional still life to exalt the tattered remnants of domestic life. An opening reception with the artist will be held on Wednesday, May 22, from 6 – 8 PM. 

The work in For, and because of… was made mostly during Letinsky’s 2023 residency in the South of France at La Maison Dora Maar, the former home of Maar, the French photographer, painter, and poet, who was also the romantic partner of Picasso. Inspired by the light of Provence in contrast to the dark weather of her home base in Chicago, Letinsky began a series she titled Who Loves the Sun in which she used natural light together with artificial light to provide her images with a radiant glow. Her subjects included borrowed objects such as a ceramic vase and glassware from La Maison that may have belonged to Maar. The detritus left behind from other artists-in-residence, as well as flowers and weeds growing nearby also found their way into her images. Yet, her photographs are not necessarily about what objects appear within them but rather about the medium of photography itself. 

Letinsky explains, “I make pictures of very ordinary things in a way that destabilizes and questions the camera’s authority while also indulging in its sexiness, solicitating a visual pleasure that is tethered to other senses.” Letinsky complicates the singular point of view of the camera by building frames within frames and precariously positioning objects in relation to one another. In reference to her innovative picture spaces, Letinsky notes, “Cezanne’s still lifes described objects from multiple perspectives so as to refer to perception being a constantly shifting process. I try to harness this, to articulate that we’ve two eyes and are ambulant living beings.”

Through her work, Letinsky questions what is necessary to make a photograph that is considered “good.” Dissonance and interruption are components of her language in which objects’ perspectival positions are abstracted and gravity is elided. By working with objects associated with the home, she makes images that evoke tenderness and project an uneasy and fragile beauty.