SOU art museum opens exhibition with images by three contemporary Oregon artists

By Art Van Kraft for Ashland.news

Schneider Museum of Art’s summer exhibition, “PACING: Photographs by Dru Donovan, Melanie Flood, and Tarrah Krajnak,” features photographs by three contemporary Oregon artists. 

Museum Executive Director Scott Malbaurn says this exhibit is unique. 

“We haven’t put forth a photography exhibition is quite some time, but this is really taking a moment and putting photography in the spotlight. We chose three different kinds of photographers for different voices in the field,” Malbaurn said.  

“We are thrilled to collaborate with Portland based curator Yaelle Amir, renowned for her expertise in photo-based art,” he added. 

Amir is a curator, educator and editor in Portland. She said her expertise is examining the ways “exhibition space can serve as a tool in community building and also focus on artists.”  

“I was real interested in female photographers that were working in performative ways,” Amir said. “Also, women who were reflecting on the role that women play in rewriting how photography is perceived. It’s very male-dominated, and these woman artists are working up against the works of male masters.”

Amir’s male-dominated concept is famously described in Thomas Berger’s 1972 art book “Ways of Seeing.” Amir says the description is something contemporary female artists are pushing back on. 

According to Berger’s hypothesis, “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed is female.” 

Amir says “these works completely erase that (Berger’s) idea and let women make their own story.” 

According to Amir, the act of “pacing” involves moving forward in a measured, rhythmic manner, where each step is taken in consideration of the one before it. She chose three mid-career female-photographers to express that idea. 

Donovan is an assistant professor of art at Lewis and Clark College in Portland. Her photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally since 2010. In “Scrum” (2019), Donovan posed rugby players to send a message — one that might surprise viewers.  

“I like to work with athletes such as dancers, strong women rugby players, cheerleaders,” Donovan said. “I usually come in with as very specific idea. Over here you’ll see a scrum from rugby. It’s a specific arraignment with two rugby teams. I removed their jersey’s and redressed them in all white.” 

Then Donovan did a surprising switch: “I was interested in the collaboration that happened in the scrum. There’s this immense force and aggression and power that can also look like care or collaboration or unity. I see it now as a large embrace.”

Flood says her photography has been lifelong and shows both growth and aging. She was invited to show her work on contemporary femininity, both in how women are viewed in public and private and also how public space is altered by gender. 

“My work has been taken over the course of my life. The first photograph is from 1988 and the most recent from 2024, so it’s really an exploration of my growth and aging and gender,” Flood said. “The work was for me and about me and I kept it in a box. Fast forward to an older adult and the photography is more about how I see myself now versus the younger work. I’m more self-aware now; the younger stuff was more performance.”

Dawn Bassett, a guest at the exhibit’s opening reception at the museum Thursday, is a new resident of the Rogue Valley. As she roamed the gallery, she said she was struck by one of Flood’s photographs.  

“What I see in this right now is my 2-year-old daughter who wants her ears pierced. In the photo, I see the pin used to pierce the ear, and then the bra underwire. The whole palette is late ’80s. It’s that needle that gets me, it’s what was used when kids’ parents wouldn’t let them pierce ears,” Bassett said. 

Krajnak is from Eugene, where she teaches photography at the University of Oregon. 

“My work in particular has to do with landscape photography and thinking about what landscape photography actually is. A lot of my work is involved with the masters and rethinking how we teach the history of photography” Krajnak said. 

In making her piece “Racing Moonrise,” Krajnak held a live performance in Cologne, Germany, where she erased three photographs by Ansel Adams by dipping her hair in hot coffee and rubbing the surface of the photograph. 

Krajnak said she was making both an homage and critique of Ansel’s work. 

“I found that I took photographs many of the same places as Ansel and I used a lot of the same materials,” she said. “It was my way of writing myself into this history and recasting myself as the master of photography.”

Art Van Kraft is an artist living in Ashland and a former broadcast journalist and news director of a Los Angeles-area National Public Radio affiliate. Email him at artukraft@msn.com.