MATRIX 193
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford
6 October 2023 - 7 January 2024

In an age of image excess, Talia Chetrit uses analog photography to probe the relationship between photographer, camera, and subject, investigating themes of agency, authorship, intimacy, and the passage of time. Family and friends appear throughout her work, as do the tools used to make her images, speaking to the connection between performance and photography.

Chetrit’s varied and often charged images displace the interpretive act to viewers, activating impulses and preconceptions and encouraging us to reflect on the role of photography in both our private and public lives. For her first solo museum exhibition in the United States, Chetrit presents an ambiguous sequence of 15 photographs, including recent works and images from her personal archive. Uncanny still lifes of shoes and clothes intermix with portraits, body parts, and family photos, drawing out unexpected formal and narrative connections. The viewer is invited in, but made to work.