Exhibition information

From July 15 to September 23, 2015, Galerie m Bochum will for the first time host a larger selection of photographs from the series Lake Pictures by US photographer Lucinda Devlin (b. 1947 in Ann Arbor, MI).

The photographer, who works exclusively in series, already developed an incisive pictorial idiom all her own in the 1970s. After devoting her attention to specific interiors in her early career, she embarked in 2006 on an intensive engagement with agricultural and lake landscapes. Her square, generally axially symmetrical photographs generate typologies of the marks left by humans on the environment, expressed in the Lake Pictures in a minimalist, almost abstract formal language.
The subject of the over 60 photographs is one of the largest lakes in the USA, Lake Huron in Michigan, on the border of Canada. Devlin has a house on the lake, from where she photographically recorded her observations of its many moods between 2010 and 2013. She describes her work with the words: „Lake Pictures is a series of photographs of Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes surrounding the state of Michigan, taken at the same place, during different seasons, and at different times of day or night, exploring the changing atmospheric nature of the lake. These pictures are about water, sky ,color, light, place, space and time.
When we look at a large body of water, intellectually we know that there is more water beyond the horizon. If we suspend our intellects, our mind's eye perceives the water as occupying infinite space. The same concept is true regarding the sky. It appears limitless. The way we can distinguish between the two is the fine demarcation line of the horizon that separates water from sky.“

Devlin’s photographs frame only a portion of the lake and the sky above it and yet convey an impression of the immeasurable expanses stretching beyond the horizon. By noting the exact date and time of each shot and maintaining the same central horizon line, Devlin allows us to compare these amazingly diverse images. Witnessing the wide range of light and color that unfolds across the various scenes, for example the turquoise clouds in the winter or the blue and pink twilight sky with a summer moon, it is almost incomprehensible that we are looking at one and the same place.