Daily Reveries

What Makes It Great? / Featured / May 14, 2019

“Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.”
-Bob Dylan

By Elin Spring

In the crush of everyday obligations, we can often ignore the mundane sights and sounds around us. Wouldn’t it be better to realize the fullness of our daily experiences? Call it “living in the moment” or “mindfulness”, but whatever you call it, it inexorably enriches our appreciation for life. Photographers Lindsey Beal, Cat Gwynn and Suzanne Révy have each seized upon ordinary moments in distinctive ways that surprise and delight in their group show, “Daily Reveries”, on view at New England School of Photography (NESOP) in Waltham, MA through May 31st, 2019.

“Commonplace Abstraction #6” by Lindsey Beal (courtesy of the artist and the New England School of Photography).

“Pink Cage” by Cat Gwynn (courtesy of the artist and the New England School of Photography).

Installation view of exhibit section from the series “A Certain Slant of Light” by Suzanne Révy (courtesy of the artist and the New England School of Photography). Photo by Elin Spring, with apologies.

“Daily Reveries” is a convincing advocate for the power of observation, offering an object lesson in ways of seeing. Beal, Gwynn and Révy all began their visual journals like many of us, with their cell phone cameras. But the similarities begin and end there. Far from the selfies, sunsets, pets and food porn that populate our media feeds, these artists reveal poetic compositions and metaphors hiding in plain sight.

“Commonplace Abstraction #8” by Lindsey Beal (courtesy of the artist and the New England School of Photography).

Lindsey Beal, accomplished in the practice of alternative photographic processes and the art of papermaking, has applied both to her toothy, rich cerulean cyanotypes. Her perspective is equally alternative. Beal’s abstract views highlight contrasts of line, geometries and composition that can produce illusions, generate vertigo or play delicious tricks on the eye. In addition to her mesmerizing framed pieces, Beal’s handmade book “Commonplace” invites our multisensory appreciation of her luscious prints.

“Commonplace Abstraction #24” by Lindsey Beal (courtesy of the artist and the New England School of Photography).

“Breathe” by Cat Gwynn (courtesy of the artist and the New England School of Photography).

Cat Gwynn’s vibrant snippets of street scenes are all charged metaphors. Galvanized by a diagnosis of cancer, Gwynn channeled her fears, frustrations and hopes into photographs she made within walking distance of her treatment center, resulting in her acclaimed 2017 photo memoir “10-Mile Radius: Reframing Life on the Path Through Cancer” (Rare Bird Books). From feeling trapped by the “breast cancer pink” metal cage fastened with multiple locks to the fierce freedom in a posse of renegade balloons over a gloomy industrial site to the bittersweet ambiguity of a window into the soaring blue heavens, Gwynn’s photographs proclaim a bold and brave vulnerability.

“Clouds in my Coffee” by Cat Gwynn (courtesy of the artist and the New England School of Photography).

Suzanne Révy’s photographs harness the expressive power of light. Her luminous (dye sublimation on aluminum) landscapes are mounted in an unusual multi-panel installation, fostering lyrical sequences of reflected light, echoing patterns and hues. Each photograph was created as a singular statement, usually a layered or mysterious scene that always heightens the sense of a moment lost to time. Révy’s inventive fragments of the world capture light, shadow and reflection with an emotional resonance that builds as the images form intriguing and elegant relationships with one another.