Dana Salvo
Born 1952, Salem, MA, lives and works in Gloucester, MA
Rek So May at 14, 2004, C print, Museum Purchase with funds donated by Mary Levin Koch, 2005.111
For over 15 years, Dana Salvo has traveled throughout Mexico, India, Vietnam, and even his hometown of Gloucester, to capture images of people in their homes. He focuses on details that are either distinctly cultural or personal to explore the common ways in which we all construct our lives.
DeCordova’s photograph is part of Salvo’s recent project, Interior Voices, based in Lowell, Massachusetts. One of the earliest planned industrial cities in New England, Lowell has followed the shifts of industrialization, globalization, and immigration. It is now home to growing Southeast Asian, Islamic, Muslim, and Arabic communities, to which Salvo gives a voice though his photographs. Rek So May at 14 is the name and age of the young girl who sits in traditional garb as a bridesmaid before a palatial interior that is, in fact, a cloth backdrop. Salvo has asked his sitters to wear formal clothing to emphasize their rich and diverse cultural background, now all gathered together on the common ground of Lowell. The false setting indicates, perhaps, the fragile and constructed nature of homes and locations.
