Angle of Repose - a photography exhibition by Toni Pepe Dan, faculty member of the Fine Arts Department
August 1 - January 20, 2013

“It’s my dream.  A world where all would be silent and each thing in its last place, under the last dust.” -Samuel Beckett, Endgame

Absence and presence is a recurring theme within this series, implying that each image works to reference something beyond the frame. Photography best portrays this thematic approach since by nature photographs possess a fundamental quality of absence.  All of the elements within the frame—the props, costumes, and gestures prompt the notion and tangibility of loss and memory.  If we had never met could I still have a memory of you?  Can we make present something that is absent?

A variety of performative devices from theater, cinema, and literature reconstruct visions and moments experienced within the walls of the character’s mind. References to memory are embedded in her gestures and body language.  Though the poses are appropriated from family photographs, at the same time they evoke the classical and art historical.  Recurring motifs such as dust suggest the past, calling to mind the idea of remains and decay.

-Toni Pepe Dan