Sanctuary
Todd Edward Herman: Sanctuary
Mercury Framing
4692 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80304
April 7-June 30, 2023
Admission: Free
Review by Stacy J. Platt
In Todd Edward Herman’s exhibition Sanctuary, you are immediately confronted with a choice: do you start by viewing the wall of photographs directly opposite the entrance, or do you turn towards the wall which only becomes visible once you walk through the door? Your choice becomes one of narration—of how you will view these images as a story and decide what they mean. Ultimately, the meaning is continually shifting.
A view of Todd Edward Herman’s exhibition Sanctuary at Mercury Framing in Boulder. Image courtesy of the artist.
Herman’s show invites associations; I would even venture to say that the exhibit requires it of you. There are no titles, no sales sheet, and no dates listed for these images. They are shown serially and read like a film strip. Herman is in fact a filmmaker in addition to a still image maker, holding both sensibilities in one brain. The effect of stopping and starting repeatedly is what I feel when moving between these images: advancing from one frame to the next.
One wall of photographs in Todd Edward Herman’s exhibition Sanctuary. Image courtesy of the artist.
So, what are the images themselves? On the wall across from the door, the photographs at first look like a solid color strip of a yellowish rust, while those on the other wall are largely Prussian blue, save for the last image in the sequence (if you read these left-to-right, which I did).
Todd Edward Herman, Untitled, 2023, inkjet print, 12 x 12 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
On the wall of (mostly) blue photographs, we see blur, grain, and human figures in the midst of falling or floating. The first image in the sequence is of an older woman in floral pajamas laying face down on a patterned surface, seemingly unable to breathe. It is reminiscent of the photographer Weegee’s (né Arthur (Usher) Fellig) iconic street killing image from 1942, captioned "Off Duty Cop Does Duty, Kills Gunman Who Tries Stickup.”
Todd Edward Herman, Untitled, 2023, inkjet print, 12 x 12 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
The next photograph in the sequence could be depicting the same figure, but in a posture that, the more you look at it, the more unnatural it seems. It is an extreme close-up or cropped composition showing the person from behind who is bent over a dining room table set with a gingham tablecloth. There is something on the floor that shouldn’t be—perhaps the figure is hunched over to pick it up. We only see the individual from the derriere down to her feet and she stands nearly on tiptoe. Is this person falling, recovering her balance after a fall, or keeling over in sudden pain?
Todd Edward Herman, Untitled, 2023, inkjet print, 12 x 12 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
Third in the sequence is a photograph of a girl levitating in the air, and at first glance she seems to be squealing with joy. But once you scrutinize the work closely, the emotion becomes more questionable and what I took for joy could easily be a grimace, or terror. The girl’s body is also positioned at impossible angles: head forward, arms forward, but her legs facing the other direction in mid-air. In Herman’s statement about the work, he alludes to mixing in AI images along with photos from his personal archive. This one seems derived from AI, and then it becomes a game for me to figure out which other photos might be too.
Todd Edward Herman, Untitled, 2023, inkjet print, 12 x 12 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
Unsettling feeling after unsettling feeling accumulates from one blue image to the next. Another work shows the same pair of pajamaed feet as in the first two photos, but this time on tiptoes that a ballerina on point could never achieve. I think of the peril of older people falling, breaking hips, and dying of injuries that won’t heal. It’s not a cheery set of images, but they are engrossing in the way that something you shouldn’t be looking at can be. What I’m regarding publicly was experienced privately and never meant to be seen.
Todd Edward Herman, Untitled, 2023, inkjet print, 12 x 12 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
The eighth and final photograph in the row burns my eyes, with its hue an intense rust orange indicating a shift of meaning. The work portrays an older woman seated at a table, covering her eyes with her hands. The table has two candle holders with flames burning low. This piece seems to recall 19th century spiritualist photography. I then analyze the dark spectrum of feelings the entire sequence of photographs evoke: danger, violence, self-violence, fear, and precarity, similar to works by Richard Billingham, Sarah Charlesworth and William H. Mumler.
A view of one wall of photographs in Todd Edward Herman’s exhibition Sanctuary. Image courtesy of the artist.
Moving towards the eight rust-colored images, I suddenly realize that all the photographs in this show are square in format. The viewer is trapped inside a tight quadrilateral, and it amplifies the sensation of not being able to breathe within the action and space of each image. Can a photograph be claustrophobic?
Todd Edward Herman, Untitled, 2023, inkjet print, 12 x 12 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
In this second set of photographs, the ones that I gravitate towards are those with children who appear to be in an open audition for Lord of the Flies. One image shows eight or more children in a tight huddle, all backs and legs to the camera. Another portrays them in various postures around a bonfire, or what I hope is just a bonfire. The last two have the disturbing quality of the blue series, depicting the children with sticks or bats raised in threatening proximity to bodies already sprawled on the ground.
Todd Edward Herman, Untitled, 2023, inkjet print, 12 x 12 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
Other images in this set undermine the intensity of feeling that I have experienced in the rest of the show, picturing hands tending seedlings, a baby’s head grasped in fatherly hands, and more hands tending soil. The closer I look at them, I discover these photos appear to be AI-generated as well (garbled hands being the tell-tale sign).
A view of five photographs in Sanctuary. Image courtesy of the artist.
The color of these images is not sienna—it’s not warm or brown enough for that—and it’s not orange. Rust is the closest hue I can settle on. Were I to graze my hand against these photos, it’s as if they could leave behind a rust-colored powder. Maybe the pure science of rust makes sense for these pictures: hydrated ferric oxide, the result of iron oxidizing after exposure to air and water. Rust is rot and decay; it can be beautiful, and it can be a nuisance.
A view of Sanctuary through the window at Mercury Framing. Image courtesy of the artist.
These are peculiar images, carefully sequenced in a manner for an accretion of unpleasant sensations and connections that wash over you the longer you consider them. Todd Edward Herman integrates AI in a personal and conceptual way in these photographs, which are part of a larger body of work that will be featured in a forthcoming publication. I’m interested to see how these images inform one another, continue the narrative, and elicit emotions in this next iteration.
Stacy J. Platt is an artist, educator, and writer living in Colorado Springs. She is interested in making (and/or writing about) art that tells personal stories about what it is to live and make art today as a member of the Global Majority at the end stage of capitalism. She holds an MFA from Columbia College of Art, and teaches visual arts at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. You can read other writing by Platt at hyperallergic.com.
