picture in picture

Fall/Winter 2020

Back in 2007 BC (before Cassilhaus), I was curating my very first show at the old house in Durham and I was clueless about how to put a photo exhibition together. I asked an experienced photo curator friend of mine, Huston Paschal, for guidance and ideas. She advised me to look at the last 10 pieces we had added to our then small collection and suggested that a theme might emerge from some common thread. To my complete surprise, 9 of the 10 had some sort of “framed” image inside the larger photograph. I had no idea what that meant, but clearly there was something subconscious going on that drew me to these photographs and compelled me to see them as a collection.

Huston added that when I started putting the images together conversations would start happening. This was new territory for me and I was skeptical. I arbitrarily put Alec Soth’s Cape Girardeau next to Ken Josephson’s New York State (The cover image for this show). Ken had extensively explored “Image within Image” work as a way of recognizing the photograph as a physical object. I pulled his most recent monograph off the shelf to read up and in the very first few pages there was an Ansel Adams photograph he mentioned as an influence. It looked familiar. It was the image taped to the wall in the Alec Soth photograph! These photographs and these photographers had nothing to do with one another and I was completely wigged out by this freak coincidence. It was also my first “curatorial experience” and an introduction to the magical connections possible when photographs are allowed to play with one another.

I called that first show Picture in Picture and now, 13 years later, I am giving it a refresh. Almost all of the pieces from the 2007 show are included here as well as 3 dozen more. The view is wider, but the magic, the same. I hope you find some magical connections of your own.

Frank Konhaus
October 2020

Events

A 3-D Matterport virtual tour of Picture In Picture is available here.

Gallery Guide is available here.

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Private appointments for individuals, schools, or other groups upon request. Please email frank@cassilhaus.com.