Curating Collaboratively with Jona Frank

On February 24th, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art opened Jona Frank: Model Home, which will be on view until June 5th. The installation, jointly developed by the artist Jona Frank and the designer Alex Kalman immerses the viewer in the world of Frank’s childhood in 1960s and 1970s Cherry Hill, New Jersey. With a combination of images, carefully crafted wallpapers, reflecting “decisive moments” in the life of the photographer, and the evocative ring of a vintage wall mounted black telephone, the exhibition creates a point of entry not only into the visual but also the psychic space of suburban America. It invites us to reexamine the universe in which we ourselves are daily embedded, promoting us both to identify the carefully crafted messages that lurk within it and to take a step back and to see that world in a new light.

Jona Frank broke away from her Cherry Hill neighborhood and began the process of honing her own artistic vision when she went to college, first in Boston and then in Los Angeles, where she would later settle. Recognizing the importance of this moment of discovery in her own life, in her late teens and early 20s, Frank sought out the input of Bowdoin’s student community, members of which she had first met during a campus visit in the spring of 2016. Its final form, particularly as realized in the Becker Gallery, reflects the insights of two Bowdoin students, Andria Polo Brizuela ’22, a Visual Arts and Neuroscience major, and Cameron Snow ’22, a visual arts and art history major with a minor in Chinese. This section of the show, entitled “Open Road,” features a wall of images that chronicle Frank’s photographic development from her student days in the late 1980s to more recent projects that predate the Cherry Hill series featured in Model Home, in particular High School (2004); the conservative college students pictured in Right: Portraits from the Evangelical Ivy League (2008), and the young British boxers featured in The Modern Kids (2015).

Pouring over nearly 200 contact sheets and related prints during the course of his summer internship, Cameron Snow identified clusters of images from Frank’s early black and white work that anticipated future directions in her career. As Snow recalled: “I spoke with Jona over Zoom every other week to catch up, share ideas, and ask any questions about her work, the exhibition, or anything else that may have come up during the research. … I took notes on all the photos I liked or any of the themes I came across as well!” He paid special attention to photographers who had inspired Frank, including Diane Arbus, August Sander, Robert Frank (no relation), Dorothea Lange, and Garry Winogrand, observing how she both channeled and departed from those precedents.

Beginning her internship in the fall, Andria Polo Brizuela, a photographer herself, observed the ways in which Frank’s pictures took advantage of the space occupied by her subject to convey meaning or to raise questions. In close consultation with Frank, she further refined the photographic selections in order to craft an installation that resonates both formally and thematically with the photographs created for Model Home. In one instance, Brizuela even chose to install a photograph of the artist’s father with its face turned away from the viewer, emphasizing the artist’s inscription rather than her image, and suggesting the many ways in which text and image relate to one another to produce meaning. Relishing “the opportunity to connect with an artist relevant to my interests,” Brizuela in turn reminds viewers of the materiality of the printed image and of the ways in which a new generation can glean its own connections from observing the development of its mentors.

For Jona Frank, the opportunity to work with Bowdoin students has proved inspiring and revealing. As she reflects: “I think the photographs Andria and Cameron selected capture a visual path to how I matured as a photographer and found my own voice.”

Come join Andria Polo Brizuela and Cameron Snow later this month as they discuss their process and insights. And please join Jona Frank on Thursday, April 7th, as she, Elinor Carrucci, and Mike Kolster discuss just what it means to capture a life through art.

Anne Collins Goodyear
Co-Director, Bowdoin College Museum of Art

 

Illustrations:

Cameron Snow ’22 researching Jona Frank material in the Museum of Art

Artist Jona Frank and Andria Polo Brizuela ’22 working during the installation of Jona Frank: Model Home