New Photography by Jean Albus

Dark Before Dawn, Jean Albus, 2010

If you were visiting my blog last year, you might remember when I posted some work by Montana artist/photographer Jean Albus.  Click here to see those posts. 

And now here’s more wonderment from Jean.  The next images are from her 2009 collection “What Else is There to Say About Land.”   

Jean’s work combines images that speak to me:  the often harsh landscape of Montana, where four generations of my family have lived; images of women; the feminine and flowing lines of beautiful fabrics and clothing. 

Somehow, these are related.    

Even I, not given to conscious stereotyping about my home state, can conjure a cowboys-and-tumbleweed image of Montana in my mind. 

But Jean’s work shows a woman here; finding her place in this land….touching, feeling, literally immersing herself in place.  In a part of the earth where geography so clearly dominates human movement, I have needed to do the same.  I have spent hours and days making my peace with the land:  leaving my footprints, ski tracks, tire marks in deep recesses of mountains where I might not be found for days if I got lost.  I have needed to lie down, dive in, dig my hands deep into the elements of the earth. 

Nowadays this urge is not so strong.  I have reached some kind of equilibrium—unconscious, mostly—with these external forms.  Always aware of them, always knowing on the edges of my consciousness that they’re there, the mountains and the forests hold me like primeval mothers’ arms.  Knowing this, I spend more time indoors, exploring the inner wilderness of line, form, and color. 

Jean Albus’ work reminds me of who I am in this place where I came into the world.

sallymandy

You can see more of Jean’s art, and contact her, at her gallery on Flickr.

The Community of Women—Or, Why Post Photos of Our Clothing?

I’m not sure how to answer the question I posed yesterday:  why do people post photos of their clothing? 

But since I asked the question, I’m going to try to answer. 

Remember Jean Albus, the tremendous artist I featured in February?  (If you didn’t see Jean’s art then, please do have a look here.)  Jean’s also known for her self-portraits, and that’s what I want to look at now.

Jean Albus. See lots more of her work on Flickr here. 

Jean has this to say about taking pictures of oneself:  “’I think when you’re alone with the camera things have a tendency to emerge that normally wouldn’t.  What surprised me…was how I came to disregard the image of myself as something personal.’”

“Albus says that the exercise [of doing self-portraits] also illuminated her philosophy on inner beauty—that humor and kindness make an image shine. She stopped posing for the camera and let herself be candid. She laughed wildly. She accepted her face in all its middle-aged details. And when she finally “got over the self-portrait thing,” as she puts it, she was ready to move on to a less literal idea of herself.”  quoted text excerpted from this article by Erika Frederickson in the Missoula Independent. 

Here are some of Jean’s other self-portraits, which I adore (clicking on each photo will take you to Flickr where they are online). 

   

Now back to why people post clothing photos. 

Many readers commented about this today, and I agree with all those thoughts to some degree.  I’m a regular chica, almost forty-six, navigating transitions in my roles, life style, and body.  You better believe I want affirmation and inspiration.  And I’d rather have it from women than anyone else, thank you very much.  

Most of my friends and I have spent years working in serious pursuits—often surrounded by men—in matters about ecology and money and programs and war and peace and good education.  I’ve spent a long time consumed by this sort of thing.    

But now, at midlife, I finally don’t care if it’s frivolous ALSO to have fun with my clothes and show them to other people.  It’s okay to be impractical, whimsical, colorful, unscheduled even if my inner critic is doing this:      

I like Jean’s words about self-portraits (and I interpret that as clothes as well as one’s face) as a way to grow.  It’s time for the inner critic to be quiet!

Favorite New (To Me) Artist--Jean Albus

Photographer Jean Albus uses vintage dresses photographed near her small Montana town to "address the harsh grandeur and sweetness of the landscape." Jean is known for her self-portraits. Of these pieces, she says "It's like the dresses are a surrogate of myself trying to figure out what my place is in this landscape, how I feel about it, my emotional connection to it."

With these vintage dresses, Jean's photographs take me back to my childhood in Montana and some even earlier time--a time before I was born, but which I heard told so often from my grandmother that I feel I lived in it, too.

Keep scrolling down for a series of Jean's photographs.

Quoted text taken from "In the Breeze," by Erika Frederickson, Missoula Independent February 19-26, 2009. All photos posted with permission. If you click here you can get Jean's contact information as well as see more photos--and larger images of these. Like many local artists, Jean sells her work at reasonable prices.

Heatwave

Untitled

Gathering Storm

Line Dance on Cherry Springs Road

Cottonwoods and Wind

She Loves A Guy Who Doesn't Know She Exists

Montana Pedernal

Untitled

No More Secrets to Conceal