Looking Good

You may be forgiven for jumping to conclusions about Fashioned, the new show opening May 3 at the Minnesota Center for Photography. Fashioned isn’t about fashion per se, it’s about how appearances do (or do not) speak to identity—fashion as a verb, that is.

“I wanted to explore the way in which contemporary character is fashioned, the material that lends itself to persona,” says Minnesota Center of Photography artistic director George Slade, who is also the show’s curator. To that end, Fashioned features the work of six photographers who follow a common thread to very different ends.

The most straightforward interpretation comes from Linda Brooks, whose portraits of teenage girls features the girls’ thoughts and feelings in plain view in the form of short bits of text written on background surfaces. Michael Dvorak’s black-and-white portraits of young people in North Minneapolis show a similar directness.

At the other end of the spectrum, Jessica Rowe and Nick Kline take the actual bodies out of the frame. Rowe photographs the clothing of deceased women, which she describes as personal and visceral “like discarded skin or hair.” Kline trains his lens on the patterns, textures, and colors of garments wrapped in plastic, waiting to be reclaimed from the dry cleaners. “Ironically,” says Slade, “Kline’s clothes look lifeless, while Rowe’s seem to be vibrating with the aura of their wearer; you can almost smell the woman’s perfume and feel the textures and warmth.”

Then you have Ryan Wong’s images of people in Chinglish (“Chinese” translated into English) T-shirts displaying such odd and often amusing phrases as "things are getting better," and "assume the position." Slade calls Wong’s portraits “fodder for an intriguing dialogue between wearer, message, context, and viewer,” which is also an apt description for the show itself. Opens May 3. Minnesota Center for Photography, 165 13th Ave. NE, Mpls., 612-824-5500