Untitled, 2011 by Lydia Anne McCarthy

Like a fading or obstructed memory as it bubbles to the surface, the images in Contender Lydia Anne McCarthy's series Shadows and Reflections are murky and a little mysterious. Important details disappear into the void, replaced by the sensation of the event or memory. Awash with the glow of refracted light, these haunting portraits are moments frozen in time awaiting each viewer's own interpretation, and are symbolic of the photographer's inclination to meander between the real and the imagined, the actual and the remembered.

Untitled, 2011 by Lydia Anne McCarthy

The artist is most concerned with—as her statement and Website reiterate—her "intense longing to experience a reality" that is not her own. Using a reconstructed 8x10 camera with the lens replaced by a fresnel, these portraits take on a blurred, abstracted quality. "The resulting images," she explains on her site, "are impressions of refracted light, with the highlights rendered as spectrum and the darker areas as undefined lines and shapes." The viewer is unable to see clearly the identifying trademarks and characteristics of the subject and is, instead, asked to project their own perceptions unto them:

I find myself obsessed with how we perceive and experience reality. These photographs are visions, flashes and hallucinations of moments from the past. Each image vibrates with the thin traces of memory and attempts to gain access to the archive of the unconscious. The lens of this camera has the ability to simultaneously mutate and beautify; it creates a flickering vortex of darkness and light. I am asking both the viewer and myself: What do you at once desire and fear? And how does this alter your perception of the world?

Untitled, 2011 by Lydia Anne McCarthy

Fans of her work will also be pleased to know she'll be exhibiting at Daniel Cooney in July 2011.