Leah Frances: Lunch Poems
The photographs in Lunch Poems highlight “third spaces”: communal settings outside of home and work such as taverns, church picnics, diners, restaurants, and movie theaters — sites where we might gather, if we could agree. Actively using photography to explore the residue of time and human effort, I create portraits of place, mindful of the individuals who have been there before and may be there again. Imaginary one-to-one conversations with these ghosts, so to speak, allow me to invest in the possibility that within this divided nation, we might, one day, understand and respect each other. Harnessing light to grasp at moments of joy in complicated environments, with these images I hope to forge an opening for deep looking and the exploration of multiple layers of meaning, an encounter with complex histories rather than one-dimensional, familiar tropes.
“The gathering places shown in the streetscapes, the storefronts and the signage in Lunch Poems are part of the documentation of America that goes back to the photographs of Walker Evans and resonates with the sensibilities of David Plowden.” — Richard J.S. Gutman, introductory essay, Lunch Poems
