Elke Morris
Elke Morris, Domicile V, (detail) 2005
Iris print, 40” x 52” (framed)
Lent by the Artist, Courtesy Miller Block Gallery
Elke Morris photographs working class neighborhoods in Lewiston, Maine, and alters the results in Photoshop to create an artificial sense of place. At first glance, the pictures appear to display tiny toy neighborhoods, or model towns, an effect achieved by blurring certain areas of the photograph and choice of subject matter. The areas of hazy focus replicate a sense of depth or atmosphere that is reminiscent of a dreamlike setting and does not conform to the world seen by the natural eye. This manipulation allows Morris to choose which details to emphasize and which to diminish. People and cars are mostly absent from the frame, while houses and yards take center stage. She captures neighborhoods which were once an integral part of the booming mill community but have since fallen into poverty. By highlighting a dilapidated clothes-line, or broken appliances strewn around three story tenement style buildings, Morris draws attention to the detritus of daily life in neighborhoods that have been left behind by the technological revolution. With these images she both invents imagined worlds and underlines society’s ignorance of urban poverty. — Lisa Sutcliffe, Koch Curatorial Fellow
“I photograph residential buildings. By looking at the shape of the building and the arrangement of windows and doors, I like to imagine what the interior space could be like. How space is used and allocated in the design of homes and what that can say about contemporary culture is interesting to me. The older multistoried and multifamily homes, depicted here in the series Domicile, often have a precarious and vulnerable quality about them, inviting discourse on social predicaments.”—
Elke Morris
Elke Morris will present an Artist Talk on Saturday, June 23 at 3 pm.
