In the Harry Wood Gallery on the Tempe campus, situated on a typically lifeless wall, a vintage photograph bearing the image of a young family gazes back at viewers. Set in front of a mountainside landscape, the proud mother and father of a young child are all smiles.
However, cradled in the mother’s arms, in place of what should be a grinning baby girl, sits a jet-black silhouette.
The photo, along with 37 others, is part of the latest exhibit, “BlackOut,” by graduate student Takara Portis, who will be graduating from the Herberger College of the Arts this December with a master’s degree in photography. The featured portraits are a collection of the artist’s childhood photographs. The common thread that holds them together is the dark silhouette in place of the artist herself.
“I never really cared about looking at my photos before,” Portis said. “It kind of brought up some memories I didn’t want to go back to.”
A few years ago, following the death of a grandparent, Portis made a trip back to her hometown in Alabama where she visited with relatives she hadn’t seen since she was a toddler.
“Everybody kind of saw me as a baby and this little girl, but the fact is, I’m 25 years old,” she said. “And looking back at my memories and my childhood became important to me.”
Following her visit, she began exploring her old photos and came up with the idea to cut herself out of them.
“I had to step outside as an artist and kind of think about what if I was a viewer looking at this,” Portis said. “What would I take away from it?”
Tiffiney Yazzie, an art history and photography junior, attended the gallery opening on Monday night. Upon viewing the photographs, she called the exhibit “very personal.”
“She [Portis] was willing to show her photos from when she was young,” Yazzie said. “The blacked-out figure makes you look at the whole composition, and you get a better idea of who she is.”
Portis, who received her bachelor’s degree in art from the University of Georgia, said viewers may take away a number of different messages, one of which is the racial connotations the exhibit represents.
“There is a picture where the blacked-out figure is eating watermelon, and that is obviously a racial stereotype that has been around for generations,” she said.
Also in attendance at the opening reception was the artist’s mother, Terry Portis, who said she took about 90 percent of the photos.
“They’re her pictures,” she said. “When I took them, I took them as a canvas of her life.”
Terry Portis also said that while she was in nursing school, as a toddler, Takara would go to work with her grandmother to a photography studio.
“From a very young age she was exposed to photography,” Terry Portis said. “As a parent, it is exciting to see my daughter’s work like this.”
While putting the gallery together, Takara Portis looked at the photographs as though she was an outsider.
“After choosing and reinventing the photographs, it helped me appreciate them a lot more,” she said. “I can look at them in a more positive light, rather than just feeling disconnected from them like I did before.”
“BlackOut” will be on display until Oct. 31 at the Harry Wood Gallery in the Art Building on the Tempe campus. Admission is free and gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday.
Reach the reporter at wclark4@asu.edu.
