Once Removed: Portraits

Time has always been an implicit subject of photography, and in J. John Priolas movingly beautiful still-lifes it becomes explicit, visible, as never before. Each image gives the object at its centera pair of bronzed baby shoes, a mended dishtowel, a puff of smokethe clear, intense scrutiny usually reserved for portraiture. These still-lifes, however, are portraits of absent lives and passing time. Once Removed brings together three stylistically distinct, thematically related series of these impeccably crafted images. The first gathers together evocative objects that speak of hope, desire, and the fleeting moments of paradise in every life. The second depicts objects whose scars, stains, and cracks testify to now vanished bodies, passions, householdsredeeming this flotsam and jetsam in photographs which brilliantly demonstrate that objects can bear witness to invisible ideas and emotional truths. The last series continues to pursue time itself and, like the other two, triumphs at photographys most difficult task: depicting what cannot be seen. In this case ephemerality itself is depicted in images of things whose lifespan was often little longer than the time it took to make the photograph.