Exhibition Review: Susan Mikula – Provincetown Banner
The photographer Susan Mikula was featured in The Provincetown Banner – “Susan Mikula captures America at its fringes”. She shoots exclusively with instant films in a variety of cameras, many of them vintage Polaroids using past-expiration Polaroid films. Working only with available light, and without cropping or image manipulation, her technique strips away detail and softens edges to better reveal the underlying and essential form and feeling of her subject. Here’s an excerpt from the article
“Ask Susan Mikula how she happened to be in Laredo, Texas, a border town across the Rio Grande from the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo, and she’ll tell you a story that might
seem at odds with today’s rancor over border control. The geography in that part of Texas is more associated with ranchers and long-horned cattle than her soft-focus photography, but a curator who saw Mikula’s work in a Miami exhibit recommended her to a U.S. State Dept. program that showcases American artists in projects destined for embassies and consulates around the world.
Mikula, who has a house in Provincetown with her partner, MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow, and loves to travel, is unabashed in her enthusiasm for the diversity that is the United States. “I love America — I love all parts of America,” she says. “I’ve worked in
some difficult places, like Camden, N.J., now so gutted where there used to be great industry.” Laredo is similar in its scrappiness, but “beautiful in its own way,” she says, and it was a good fi t as subject matter for her photographs. It shares with much of the Southwest a forlorn, cinematic look.”
View a video that includes Susan’s work.
Featured image above: “ux #42” by Susan Mikula
Email us to learn more about Susan Mikula’s work.
