Show World
by Vince Aletti
"Moti Mentali," the title for the savvy show of photographs
of children and adolescents at the Marvelli Gallery (526 West 26th
Street, through November 15), comes from Leonardo da Vinci. Though
its literal translation from the Italian—"the motions of
the mind"—is rather clumsy, it does suggest da Vinci's
use of the phrase to describe portraits that allow us some insight
into the sitter's state of mind. Even if that insight is fleeting
and mostly imaginary, the photographs Marvelli has chosen to evoke
it are provocative, and the conversation he sets up among them is
especially compelling.
The exhibition was apparently inspired by the obvious affinity between
the work of several contemporary female photographers—Hellen
van Meene, Rieneke Dijkstra, and Ingar Krauss—and their Victorian
forebears Julia Margaret Cameron and Lewis Carroll. But Marvelli's
sensitive juxtaposition of the work renders this intricate web of
attraction and influence anything but routine. Several of Cameron's
dark-eyed maidens appear to have been reincarnated in Krauss's and
van Meene's young girls and one strikingly androgynous boy. Every
flash of impudence, inwardness, and soulfulness finds its reflection
within the room. Whether they were photographed in 1869 or earlier
this year, all these subjects share a gravity and grace so lovely
their impression is hard to shake.
