Jessica Harper

Jessica Todd Harper's first monograph is a highly charged collection of otherworldly domestic interiors that bring to mind both the religious intensity of Northern Renaissance artists like Albrecht Durer or Jan Van Eyck and the quiet eroticism and tenderness of Andrew Wyeth's Helga pictures. Portraying an intimate world flooded with warm and ethereal light, Harper explores the interior lives of her subjects with precision and honesty. A woman stands as an awkward column in front of her seated future in laws; a man looks on with a mixture of fear, awe and adoration at the naked body of his pregnant wife; a baby stares intently into the camera, a dapple of sunlight playing across his face: these spontaneous and emotionally intense scenes reveal themselves to also be carefully composed and orchestrated. One of the winners of the Santa Fe Center for Photography's Project competition, and included in PDN's prestigious list of "Emerging Photographers to Watch", Harper gives the viewer a fascinating glimpse into a provocative and beautiful intimate landscape.