Ruth Lauer Manenti: 4 Sides of the Table

An intimate reflection on loss, mourning and memory, made manifest through Manenti's spectral black-and-white photography

Upon receiving a large-format camera in 2012, the American photographer Ruth Lauer Manenti (born 1968) at last accessed a poetic sensibility she had first sought within drawing and painting. Her spectral photographs evoke the ephemeral motion of life and the vertiginous memories it impresses. In her new series, 4 Sides of The Table, made from 2022 to 2024, Manenti continues her meditation upon time's passage. The inciting image for this series emerged from an intimate, sorrowful scene: her mother's best friend, June, reading poetry as Manenti's mother lay dying in bed. In the wake of loss, Manenti found within June a maternal replacement. She began photographing June in segmented parts from various angles: hands, legs, front, back, partial views. When June's own daughter unexpectedly died, Manenti, too, became a replacement. Together, Manenti and June document the poignant work of mourning--the effort to preserve the unseen through new material forms.