OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, March 6th 6-8pm
Spectral Lineage: Parlor of Shadows brings together the photographic works of Ann Pallesen and Jenny Riffle in a joint exploration of memory, domestic interiors, and the unseen. Drawing on historical photographic processes and immersive installation strategies, the exhibition situates the domestic parlor as a site of lineage, ritual, and lingering presence.
Pallesen’s work Era unfolds as a layered salon installation that draws inspiration from Victorian courtship, matriarchal lineage, and treasured heirlooms. Her vintage reverse-painted silhouette portraits and hand-printed lith prints evoke intimate pasts and imagined narratives, placing figures within idyllic, shifting landscapes that respond to light and shadow. Photographs informed by family archives, early travel postcards, and domestic artifacts further explore inheritance and the ways objects carry memory across generations.
Riffle’s work What is a ghost? approaches the parlor as a haunted threshold between presence and absence. Using long-exposure pinhole images, lumen prints, expired film, and the tricks of photography her work reflects on spiritualism, belief, and photography’s historical role in visualizing the invisible. Forests, orbs, and blurred forms become spectral impressions, suggesting energies that linger beyond what can be seen or fully known. Together, their work examines how images and objects record presence and absence, creating spaces where memory, history, and the ephemeral converge.