Dedicated to the One I Love
Dedicated to the One I Love
Annie Appel’s portraits of her Muse are on view in San Pedro’s Gallery 381
Photographs by Annie Appel
One can be inspired by a sunset or a sermon, but when a creative artist is inspired by another person then that person becomes a muse. An artist desires a muse because a muse unlocks the cage, and
awakens or reawakens the artist. In that sense, then, the muse can be likened to a gentle breeze in one’s sails, a living sanctuary, or an always percolating cup of strong coffee. Inspiration! It’s a beautiful thing.
Photographer Annie Appel has her muse, a lovely woman named Silvia Askenazi, who has inspired and is the subject of an ongoing series of photographic portraits on view at Gallery 381 in San Pedro. “The Gratitude Journals: A Love Story” consists of 20 pictures taken from 2008 to the present, and we’re going to find out a little bit more about how they came to be.
Hold that pose
Annie (we’ll just use first names here) met Silvia about eight years ago. It wasn’t that many months later that Annie hosted her first show devoted to Silvia, one that she titled “Serenata de Amor,” after Silvia’s favorite chocolate as a child in Argentina.
(Argentina? Yes, and she’s a tango instructor as well; see below)
In the seven years since, Annie has continued to photograph Silvia, but not in the usual way of long sessions where she fires off hundreds of shots.
These are, rather, formal or semi-formal portraits taken with a 70-year-old Rolleiflex twin-lens film camera, and there’s nothing quick about the process.
“You have to take a light reading,” Annie says, “and you have to set the settings.” Furthermore, she tries to establish a rapport, not only with her subject, of course, but with the environment, and with that special moment in time.
And, again, these aren’t sessions, but sittings where Annie will often take just one picture.
For the most part, the images seem somber or serious, by which I mean we don’t find Silvia laughing or smiling. That’s not to say that Silvia is a stick-in-the-mud, just the opposite in fact, but rather that these are not snapshots. As Annie aptly puts it, we don’t walk around smiling in our everyday solitude. (Maybe frowning on occasion, but rarely smiling when we’re alone in our personal habitat and going about our daily routine)
Besides, if a person is told to hold a smile for more than a few seconds then the spontaneity that characterizes a genuine smile is lost, and becomes artificial or forced.
Stepping into their world
Editing down several years’ worth of photographs to just 20 took some time and thought. In almost every image, Silvia is fairly prominent, as if we’re standing maybe three or five feet from her.
This is by way of introducing a more intimate level of exchange between the viewer and the subject. Annie also has several shots (not in the show) of Silvia farther back in the landscape, but points out that with pictures like those the attention can easily shift away from Silvia, and perhaps away from the narrative thread of the exhibition.
“One of the things that I was striving for in this show was to really put the viewer in the shoes of the beholder and the beholden,” Annie says. “For one minute as the viewer you’re in love with this person that’s in the photograph, and for one minute the person in the photograph is in love with you, or tolerating you,” or simply looking back at you.
The occasion for the exhibition at this time is twofold. Silvia recently had one of those so-called milestone birthdays, and also, last month, Annie and Silvia tied the matrimonial knot. So, just as the show is a gift to the viewing public it is also a gift to themselves.
Annie doesn’t say it, but an exhibition that is so personal is also as much an act of courage as it is of love, because whenever an artist opens his or her heart to the public there’s a big risk. The work may be ridiculed and rejected, or the response may be one of sheer indifference. After all, the outsider always appraises the muse differently than the one who is inspired by her.
The difference here, though, is that Annie Appel is a dedicated photographer who’s already spent decades on several long-term photographic essays (think of “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” by James Agee and Walker Evans), and in addition to being in private hands her work is also in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
She’s in it for the long haul, in other words, and the present show will most likely continue to evolve over the coming years. Or, as Annie herself notes, “The exhibition seeks to share a range of the love and light unfolding before the lens.” A love, it should be emphasized, that transcends convention or prejudice.
The show is a collaboration, because the muse and the artist have a partnership, even if it’s unspoken. Each requires the presence of the other, and each elevates the other. It’s hard to ask for more than that.
The Gratitude Journals: A Love Song is on view through Sept. 23 at Gallery 381, located at 381 Sixth St., San Pedro. Open First Thursdays and by appointment. (310) 809-5082. Silvia, who helps Annie run the gallery, also employs the space for her successful Tango San Pedro. More information at tangosanpedro.com and more about Annie Appel’s photography at documentingworlds.com. To see all of the images in the “Sylvia” series, go to documentingworlds.com/SERENATA.html ER
