I decided to respond to the Gallery’s request for a statement about my work by sharing a few thoughts that occurred to me as I saw my work and Jane’s together. These statements should not be taken as definitive, the work should speak for itself. Yet in work of this nature which is evocative rather than definitive, what the work does say can change according to who views it, under what conditions, etc. It can act, in fact, as much a mirror of the spectator, of the person who views the work, as of the photographer. Now that the work is done – it exists – and I can merely add my speculation to that of anyone else who looks at it.

We both begin with the nude bodyÑthis is the starting point for each series. bodies that are in most cases faceless. Jane is closer to the classical in her consciousness of form nothing extraneous, simplified shapes against a sky.bodies, bodies without the specificity of faces tending toward the universal. Her female forms have some of the tranquility and harmony associated with classicism. The male figures are certainly creatures of the 20th c., filled with tension, distorted, troubled, yet strangely beautiful. It is the tension between the careful formal composition, approaching at time abstraction, and the underlying conflict and violence which gives these figures their particular poignancy. JaneÕs figures border on the heroic. They are engaged in a struggle, idealized by their outdoor setting and formalism.

Hers have an energy that thrusts outward, mine have an opposite projection, they turn inward. To begin with they exist indoors. The settings are minimal, but there is always something specific, a couch, a curtain, a wood floor or molding to ground them in this world, a worldly world as contrasted with Jane’s more universal one.

Like Jane’s they appear faceless, or covered by masks. I am interested in the irony of covering faces and leaving bodies bare (usually we cover our bodies.) I am concerned with crossing boundaries, stretching the possible, the known, exploring ambiguity. The toning is used to emphasize this ambiguity. It merges subject in background, reality in fantasy.

The world is sensual, but not in a specifically sexual way. Sensuality extends to the inanimate objects -the cloth, the vegetables, Cloth and vegetables exchange qualities with the bodies whose space they share: cloth becomes flesh-like, flesh takes on some of the heavy form of gourds. Both series deal with sensuality, but in a different way. Jane’s is that of energy, the figures are taut, upright, her camera angle links them to the sky, like some form of bird creature, they are not of the earth. My figures are relaxed, prone, concave. My camera angle links them to the ground, or their surroundings, makes them worldly, not universal. A kind of black humor arises from their situation, humor that is grounded in the crossing of boundaries. Humor tends to lighten the sensuality, there is a sense of relief in it. Sometimes, not always, a sense of play keeps them precariously above underlying currents of a more disturbing nature.

– Carole Harmel