Though there are more than 200 prints — photographs of more than 150 people from 20 Seattle theatres — the “Celebration” exhibit from studio Photo Sister is a view through a keyhole at the larger performing arts scene. Keep that in mind as you traverse the exhibit, spread out over three floors of the historic ACT Theatre building. It opens June 20th –with, fittingly, a celebration from 6 to 10 p.m., RSVP here — and will be on display through October 17th.
Interspersed with portraits of faces familiar to any regular theatre-goer — the ACT gallery includes Marya Sea Kaminski, Julie Briskman, Pamela Reed, Kevin Tighe, Jeff Steitzer, Kurt Beattie, Marianne Owen, and Tim Gouran, among others — are photographs of offstage participants as well, from designers to development officers. That’s an artistic statement in itself, because support staff are so often cropped out of close-ups of the performing arts.
Other galleries document Intiman’s comeback as a summer festival, and smaller theatres doing more experimental works: you see Aimée Bruneau, Hannah Victoria Franklin, and Ali el-Gassier for Washington Ensemble Theatre, and Tommy Smith, Waxie Moon, Matt Drews, Markeith Wiley, Paul Budraitis, John Osebold, and Montana von Fliss as well.
The curse of Seattle’s tightly-knitted social networks means that if you know one or two of these names, you likely know them all — or you’ve never heard of any of them. In insular Seattle — yes, even in theatre circles — people at one organization may not know who’s working in another department, let alone their counterparts in another. “Celebration,” by making a start at looking at the theatre community, means to redress that.
Of course, the portraits also reward closer, individual inspection. In the relatively short 16 months of her project’s existence, Lobdell has “altered the way we see Seattle performers,” writes Brendan Kiley in The Stranger. Partly that’s because performing arts marketing tends to be an underfunded, strangely staid exercise, consisting of stock artist headshots (smiling or serious), and production shots from rehearsal.
While Seattle is home to other inventive photographers, their work is often associated with a particular organization or group: Tim Summers with On the Boards, Zebravisual with Spectrum Dance. Lobdell stands out for having cut such a wide swath through the scene (though she admits she can’t keep up this amount of free photography, and wishes, ruefully, that she’d applied for a grant for herself).
But she also stands out because her photographer’s eye is joined with an uncanny sense for a show’s essence, considering she often shoots in advance of a show existing in any visible form at all. It’s a rare skill to produce something with the required visual impact, but which is still true to the creative work in question. (Here’s a recent highlight.)
A wedding photographer for more than a decade (she began shooting on film, and only switched to digital in 2006), Lobdell says a lot of the skills she picked up were transportable to the arts environment — you’re part photo-journalist, part portraitist, you rely on props and landscape to create atmosphere, shoot in all lighting situations and under extreme pressure, and have to keep in mind a “supporting cast,” as well.
Photo Sister’s physical studio is over by Gasworks Park, an airy lightbox of a room for Lobdell’s use. A large bag contains her Nikon D700, wearing a workhorse 18-to-70mm zoom lens, extra batteries and lenses and lights, and a camera strap she created for women, in collaboration with a fashion designer. (She’s also involved with creativeLIVE, who produce in-person and streaming seminars for creative professionals.) It’s culturally, one suspects, a long way from Spokane County, where she was home-schooled until about 8 years of age. At least, it’s difficult to place Lewis Black, whom she’s photographed, out in an eastern Washington wheat field. But maybe that’s where her ability to visualize what’s not there arises from.
