Leslie Hewitt

Hewitt repurposes domestic and personal objects, such as plants, family snapshots, a Thelonious Monk album, and the 30th anniversary issue of Ebony, to create still lifes that intertwine personal and historical narratives. Although it appears as if Hewitt came across the arrangements by chance, each one is meticulously composed, revealing a sculptural approach to image making. In two works included here, Hewitt turns the orientation of the images upside down, subverting the illusion of a photograph as a window into a pictorial world. The play of meaning between the items in her photographs is sometimes deeply personal and other times political, often questioning the nostalgia that is evoked through family mementos and relics of the civil rights era.