Erica Kelly Martin

Images from the American West

       I grew up in the American West.  Mostly in Los Angeles, which sometimes puts a glossy veneer on the American Dream.  On family vacations, we would get in the car, or the camper on my Grandpa’s truck, and drive to the wilder places.  Long highways leading to small towns, and vast vistas.  Places where churches and strip clubs exist on the same block, where one can buy homemade ice cream, assault weapons, knitting supplies or taxidermy all at the local drugstore.  Or where, looking the other direction, the untamed view takes ones breath away.  Many of the places I have photographed are changing rapidly, making way for high rises, strip malls, and box stores.

      There is something quintessentially American about the big highways and lonesome winds, the strange glimpses of the selling of dreams, of momentary pleasures and necessities, the fortune tellers and coffee shops, the sacred next to the profane.  America is struggling at the moment, about which way to go, which side to choose, which road to follow.  The divides of race, gender, class, and tribe are ever more clearly drawn. With images of my hometown, and the roads leading out from it to the horizon, I am attempting to navigate the wilderness. 

This was a hell of a few years. The viruses, the shootings, the fires, the politics, the confusion, the isolation, and everything else we do have all felt so difficult. So many things have felt outside of our control. And yet there were moments of such intense beauty, connection, and love.

Looking around her home, Martin collects and examines the evidence of the insanity, rituals, and fecundity of our daily lives - a skull her daughter found in the dirt, her wilting sixtieth birthday flowers, the insects that invade, the stuff we hoped would make us feel safe, the decaying fruit that we forgot to eat, the birds that few into the walls of glass, the talismans of hope for the future. Set against the sometimes chaotic outside world, the mundane and magical objects we accumulate bring comfort in these wild times.

This series portrays a distinctly other view of the world. With a direct gaze, images based on mythology and literature capture detailed yet ambiguous moments, that are at once intimate and surreal. The use of the negative invokes flipping the idea of what is feminine, provoking a closer look at the viewer's assumptions.

There are women with rumpled hair and tattoos juxtaposed with those of an outstretched hand, and a floating jellyfish, evoking a sense of fragility; of life delicately balanced, of the danger inherent in our being. These images convey a powerful yet vulnerable energy, suggesting that the feminine possess a magic of its own - a kind of capability that is both captivating and unsettling.

The work challenges conventional notions of beauty, offering an alternative view that is both raw and lyrical. Through the linking of these seemingly discordant images, the viewer is extended an invitation to consider the world in a new and unexpected way. They evoke a sense of being on the brink of something momentous and mysterious, and address the simultaneous power and risks of being a woman.