Interior View, Linn Underhill Studio, Lisle, NY, 2/22/2015

In photographer Linn Underhill’s studio this weekend I saw a new work pinned to the wall. Though I doubt that she had Jackson Pollock in mind when she made it,

Jackson Pollock, Number 31, 1950, MoMA, New York

I couldn’t help but think that her photo-based work elaborated upon Pollock’s iconic drip paintings in Underhill’s very personal and feminist way. Without ever setting brush to canvas, Underhill repainted Pollock, making a disturbing, haunting new work.

Underhill’s mother was a photographer too. She photographed many 1950’s weddings in northern California. Over the years Underhill has occasionally incorporated her mother’s photographic archive in surprising ways, for example, using wedding shots to give the lie to the “happiest day in a girl’s life.” Those forced smiles and stiff family groups sometimes can prefigure the profound disappointment and tragic melancholy that leads to lives of misery.

View out the back door of Linn Underhill’s studio, Lisle, NY

Underhill trapped some of these wedding moments in the tangled bramble that she photographs in the woods out behind her studio in upstate New York to powerful effect.

Linn Underhill, Roots, 2015 (Archival Inkjet Print)

Linn Underhill, Roots, 2015, DETAIL (archival inkjet print)

More here on the work of Linn Underhill.