Lisa Elmaleh: Between the Divides, August 15-September 5, 2020

Join KMR Arts for the opening of Lisa Elmaleh: Between the Divides, Saturday, August 15, from 3-6pm with an artist talk. And book your tintype portrait session with Lisa Elmaleh for August 16 or 17.

Between the Divides is a series of images made by Lisa Elmaleh throughout the heartland of America since 2016. Elmaleh's choice of using the 8 x 10 camera has always been a conscious one, since this photographic process is slower and requires a different type of interaction between photographer and subject. Elmaleh and her subjects make the picture together, a collaboration. These photographs serve as artistic and historic documents of a crucial moment in the history of this country. The idea of the divides is both geographical and metaphorical. In her travels, Elmaleh concentrated on non urban areas: rural enclaves, small towns, the types of communities that historically have shaped the character of this country.

Between the Divides, in Elmaleh's own words: "

I have sought out working class people and their environs, spent days with ranchers on the southern border of Texas, met a family living off-grid in the desert of Colorado, spent days in a butcher shop in Montana struggling to meet the demands of a perceived meat shortage. I found something poignant: strength and humanity in Middle America.  These vignettes of experience are documented in the language of black and white film, photographed with an 8x10 camera.  This work, and use of this camera, is not about quick judgment, rather, about slow perceptions.

I delineated an area: the landscape between the Eastern Continental Divide, the center of which is in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, and the Western Great Divide, in the Rocky Mountains.  As I traveled, I saw a large wall around a once-segregated school, factories abandoned and crumbling, environmental pollution: a nod to the past, the "greatness" America is striving for.

This is the story of Middle America and the places that tell the story of the present, which seems to be a story of resilience in this time.