A Beautiful, Mysterious Everyday Life
Painter Bo Bartlett on Jessica Todd Harper's photographic art
“Vermeer found a life’s work in the corner of a room.” — Irwin Greenberg
Sometimes, paintings look like photographs. And occasionally, photographs look like paintings. This weekend, something special and a little unusual: painter Bo Bartlett shares an essay reflecting on Jessica Todd Harper's photographic art. Many of you know I love looking at the light; these two artists do it better than most. I’ll keep things brief so you can get to the good stuff: Bo’s words and Jessica’s pictures.
I’m looking forward to hearing what you think about this work. Take it away, Bo!
I remember clearly the first time I saw one of Jessica Todd Harper's photographs. It was in an art publication in the early 2000s — I can’t remember what publication. I was living outside Philadelphia and had a studio at my house. I recall seeing the image in the magazine and thinking it was a painting. To be blunt, I was jealous. It was such a perfect image. It was a portrait of a dark-haired young woman in a sepia-toned interior wearing a white dress. The accouterments of a well-appointed house, the glow of a chandelier, a sideboard, and a dining room table were all part of the scene. It had a strength of composition, a very painterly sensibility, with a softness of focus that did not break down the integrity of the image. It was clear that the creator had a vast knowledge of Western Art. Chiaroscuro. The tonal relationships. The Golden Mean. The pyramidal composition. It was a powerful work, intimate yet universal. Once I read the caption and realized that it was a photograph, I was relieved. Painters are competitive with one another but not with photographers. It is a different medium. A painter can appreciate a photograph without having to compete head-to-head. And I have appreciated Jessica’s work ever since that day.
As it turns out, that photograph was of her younger sister, Becky, a favorite subject. Her photographs often capture private moments, mostly of close family, seeming slices of life, which teeter in imbalance and teem with the everyday chaos of life. There is something classically trained about her work, an awareness of the Great Masters, a Vermeer-like formality. At the same time, it feels like anything can happen: a composed quality balanced against chaos and images that embrace formality and messiness. All of the pieces seem to fall into place by some kind of mystical design as if the universe conspired and each piece of a divine puzzle miraculously found its proper slot.
For instance, in Sally with Catherine and Heather, strong diagonals of shadow bars and the sharp edge of a chair join with a late-season Christmas tree and seemingly haphazard packages to frame a trio of young girls. The transcendent Southeast Pennsylvania winter light, made famous by Andrew Wyeth in nearby Chadds Ford, illuminates them. The image reveals something unseen, unplanned, and unaccounted for: a momentary glance, the glint in an eye, all coming together in the firmly planted figure of a girl with her head turned slightly away like a Holbein portrait from the Northern Renaissance. An unexpected harmony in this busy composition underscores the miraculous chance of finding transcendence.
The photographs have a spiritual quality. In one image of a family gathering in a kitchen, late afternoon light enters through large west-facing windows and falls on faces and shoulders and across chests of fathers and mothers and daughters and sons and siblings. No one is spared, artificially heightened by the lens, or digitally enhanced. There is no trickery: the image is objective and true. So often, we seem to swim through life without noticing beauty sitting right in front of us. Jessica's photographs give us this beauty; they frame and capture those exquisite moments so that we can see them and apprehend them.
Great art comes out of a life fully lived. Great art happens when the eye of the maker sees the elements before it and understands their import. Generations of ancestors led to this moment. The whole of one’s life may be summed up in one image: in an instant, our forearm hair standing straight up from static, the tingling on the back of the neck. Great art does this and brings a piercing and intense pleasure to the mind. We are humbled when we see it, sometimes momentarily jealous, until we are awed and proud. Awed and proud that a human being was alive enough, awake enough to see it, capture it, and serve it up for us.
Art like this is a gift. Jessica Todd Harper is a rare artist. She lives her daily life simply and earnestly, raising children and providing for family. And she gives her days back to all of us via her documentation. The images are a record and byproduct of her life — a beautiful, mysterious everyday life.
Excerpted from Here, photographs by Jessica Todd Harper. Text © 2022 Bo Bartlett, Reprinted with permission.
About the author
Bo Bartlett is an American realist with a modernist vision. His paintings are well within the tradition of American realism as defined by artists such as Thomas Eakins and Andrew Wyeth. Like these artists, Bartlett looks at America’s heart — its land and its people — and describes the beauty he finds in everyday life. His paintings celebrate the underlying epic nature of the commonplace and the personal significance of the extraordinary.
Bartlett was educated at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where realist principles must be grasped before modernist ventures are encouraged. Family and friends are the cast of characters that appear in his dreamlike narrative works. Although the scenes are set around his childhood home in Georgia or his island summer home in Maine, they represent a deeper, mythical concept of the archetypal, universal home. — Tom Butler, excerpt from the book Bo Bartlett, Heartland
I dug deep in my Gmail to see when I started writing to Jessica Todd Harper. Not surprisingly, I cold-called her in 2008 to ask about her first book, Interior Exposure. Sixteen years ago! Those early FlakPhoto days were thrilling because I was beginning to understand how the internet worked: you could email a photographer, and most of the time, they’d write back. (I never tire of this, but it was especially thrilling back then.) We’ve corresponded periodically since, and I like to keep tabs on what she’s up to because I love how she sees.
Jessica’s family pictures show a different family life from the one I grew up in. Still, I recognized the closeness between the people in her photographs. We may have come from different backgrounds, but there’s something universal about familial connections, and Jessica’s work puts those bonds front and center. And for a romantic like me, her saturated color palettes and light-drenched interiors are visual music to my eyes.
It’s been fun revisiting her work in the context of producing this piece, and I hope you make some time to explore her website. If you use Instagram, you might follow her feed. It’s filled with these gorgeous images and will brighten your timeline.
One more thing…
If you liked these pictures, you will love Jessica’s book Here, which looks at the quiet moments of beauty in our domestic lives. This is Jessica’s third book, a pleasant meditation on home, family, and the spaces we inhabit together. You can buy a copy from Jessica by visiting her website. Please check it out!
like characters in a play-- stunning how they are peering in different directions- like they are in their own separate worlds, yet united by the picture frame. formalism is alive in these photos. Yet hey still seem unstaged, unlike Crewdson or Jeff Wall
I love this kind of work. Not only does it, for me, generate a real sense of wonder, but the skill involved and the questions provoked. Just incredible.