Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Tacitly pointing to the common tendency to “perform” a particular role for the camera, Frank does not directly picture the photographer and her family, but instead uses surrogates: actor Laura Dern portrays her mother while younger actors depict a maturing Frank. Forbidden as a child from handling the family camera (an experience “documented” by Frank), the artist plays with the residue of memory filtered through snapshots.

Family photographs appear in an environment replete with toile wallpaper that playfully echoes “decisive moments” in the life of the photographer, while simultaneously threatening to engulf her. Also present is the rotary dial phone that seemed to bring only life-shattering pronouncements and a meticulous recreation of a birthday party gone awry. Colorful embroideries both reference the handiwork traditionally associated with “woman’s work” and humorously elevate the seemingly mundane to objects worthy of real attention. Transparent sculptures of the artist, filled with suggestive artifacts such as cherry blossoms and “lucky charms,” evoke the “Visible Man” educational toy that intrigued her as a child, while simultaneously raising questions about the qualities that enable others to “see” us or that seem to make us “invisible” to others. At the center of the exhibition stands a miniature sculptural facsimile of the artist’s childhood home, through which viewers can watch projections of the domestic tableaux unfolding within. The exhibition serves as a counterpoint to the photographs it features, bringing the viewer back into contact with the physical environment that so powerfully imprinted the mind of the artist as a young girl.

With a disarming and even mischievous sense of humor, Frank invites her viewers to reflect on the intersection between the environments that shape us and the ideals they marshal. She asks how we achieve that particular alignment between youthful dreams and mature accomplishment that enables us to feel that we have somehow become ourselves, and challenges us to consider: ‘what else?’