Robert Sullivan writes on Melissa Shook in Vogue magazine.
The two shows crescendo in the excerpts from Melissa Shook’s long-term project “Daily Self Portraits,” for which she set up her camera and tripod every day in her Lower East Side apartment and made a picture a day for two years. (While only some of Shook’s survey is displayed at the PMA, all two years’ worth is on view at the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, through the summer.) The work is glorious in myriad ways: clever and practical, insightful and improvised. It is also affirming; Shook spoke, at the time, of working “to prove I exist,” and in a talk at the PMA, her daughter described Shook’s struggles with depression.
In one of the photos, her hands frame her nose. In another, she poses nude beside an avocado plant. In more than one, Shook’s young daughter is there. In another, Shook seems to be just out of the shower, trying to start the day. She was exploring feminism and art history as a single mom in a small room with good light and a big camera, and a half-century later, the project helps us remember how personal photography can be, especially when we are thinking with it, or using it to help ourselves to see. If ever she missed a day, Shook would expose a piece of photo paper in the darkroom, printing it blank white.
The sheet marked time and a moment in consciousness, a way of thinking that today we risk forfeiting to the vacant stare and the scroll. But “Daily Self Portraits” more broadly represents all that goes into being a thoughtful artist, including patience and the physical self—radical requirements in an age that scratches away at space and time and wants to know where an artist is headed before they set out.
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