Matisse and Laura Ashley Border by Jane Kaplowitz

Their legs are offered to the viewer in a vase of shadow and stone. One kicks like a stem tilts. They are clearly angels’ legs, celestial dancers, moving on an axis of stilled time. So does Venus, emerging from cloth like a snake in a basket, her own snake and her own apple. Stiff dead Egyptians can be sexy, sensuous like a fossil with a heartbeat. The most overtly sexy female in her Empire recliner is more removed. Her chaise, like a vitrine, shows her off but it offers her less.

The landscapes are where the blackness lives in the photographs. The blackness has its own inner density, printed with absoluteness like a mezzotint. How can we get to the light when the darkness and weight are so inviting? The mossy fountain burgeons with life, a vanitas. The waterfall fountain is a thing unto itself like the Venus, its own dais and its own axis, turning almost imperceptibly. It spills to renew itself.

—April Gornik

MOLLY, MERCY, MADELINE,
MYRA, MAGGIE, MEREDITH,
MARLEY, MAGDA, MARGARET,
MINDY, MILLIE, MAGDALA,
MYRNA, MOIRA, MARIANNE,
MARLA, MAURA, MARIGOLD,
MEGHAN, MARY, MILLICENT,
MAITE, MAPLE, MITZI.