Distler Reviews “SOMA”

Written by Arlene Distler:

The current show at the Vermont Center for Photography is not “easy.” It doesn’t go down as smoothly as a beautiful landscape, close-up of a flower, or traditional portrait (all of which I happen to love). But these recent photographs by Michelle Rogers Pritzl, a series she titles “Soma,” are as important as they are edgy. Looking in some instances like photos from a 19th Century chamber of tortures, the photographs are actually self-portraits of the artist that metaphorically depict the mental and emotional harm we inflict on ourselves, by carrying with us trauma or hurtful life events from the past.  Although she has used herself as model, they are not “me-specific,” says the artist. Emphasizing their supra-personal nature, she continues, “We all have had hard moments…or years. It’s easy to get stuck in grief, but seeing you can make a choice to move forward, seeing there is a choice…was a profound realization for me.”

The titles of the photos are all taken from Freud’s “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” a book that made a deep impression on Pritzl. “I could see in his description of patients’ behavior how true they were, from my own observations of myself and my friends. I agreed.”  Not only did the book open for Pritzl a window into self and others that confirmed what she was seeing and experiencing, It turned out to be a creative wellspring.

The Soma series are far more than an exercise in psychological awareness, however exorcising or healing. The photographs are beautiful in their rich blacks, textures, and bright whites that read like explosive moments of insight emerging from interior recesses. Her process employs an unusual concordance of 19th Century and 21st Century techniques.

It was while living and teaching in California that Pritzl was first introduced to the tintype, at a workshop given by Alan Barnes. “The moment I felt the metal in my hands, I knew this was what I wanted to do.” Pursuing the technique further, she found Christopher James’ book, “Alternative Processes of the Nineteenth Century.” Eventually she went back to school, to Lesley College of Art and Design, to study with James and received an MFA in photography. Soma constitutes her thesis project. It has been shown in several galleries and museums of photography from Boston to Colorado.

Pritzl’s compelling images of an interior landscape that are both haunting personal statements and yet have a resonance, I believe, for many women coming to grips with their psychological history, are made immeasurably more so by the artist’s photographability. “It was almost an accident, using myself as a model. I was a recent arrival in Boston when I started these – I didn’t know anyone I could ask to model, and so I locked myself in a room and started creating.” As it turns out, Pritzl as model creates a perfect “tabula rosa” for her scenarios –– delicate, fine-featured the subject could easily be an idealized portrait from the turn of the Century, or one of Dali’s impassive women in his surreal compositions. Furthermore, locking herself up in a small space, using only herself as model has imbued the photographs with an intimacy and claustrophobic quality that suits the subject matter.

In the tintype technique collodion and silver nitrate are each in turn poured on a metal plate (Pritzl likes to use trophy metal, which is already blackened). The way these elements go on the plate affects texture and the distribution of white and dark areas. The silver nitrate can dip, pool, etc., which leaves its traces. In one photograph, “Restoration of an Earlier State,” the liquid used in rendering the plate light-sensitive has left streaks across the image that creates almost an underwater effect––a figure places glass “cups,” the kind used in alternative healing, along her back. The glass shimmers under faint ripples formed by the drips of nitrate.

But Pritzl is not trying to be anachronistic. “I love working now,” she said. “There are so many techniques available. I love combining them.” While tintypes are essential to her process, and in some of Soma, the image on the metal plate is created purely “in-camera” (“That Which Was Inanimate,” a photograph of the photographer’s hands, and “A View of the Psychical Binding,” an image in which the artist’s legs are bound with string, are two such works), others use some compositing and digital manipulation. “I love in-camera work, but the image is the thing that matters, and I have to be free to do what brings the image I have in my mind to the final print.”

A second body of work came out of  Soma, also self-portraits, which the artist identifies as more specifically about her girlhood growing up a Southern Baptist.  They explore what the pressure of “purity culture” does to a young girl’s psyche.

Pritzl’s work at the Vermont Center for Photography is an achievement — she has created a series of photographs that are stylistically original, imminently photographic and emotionally powerful.

Michelle Pritzl will be teaching a workshop on wet plate collodion (tintypes and ambrotypes) on Saturday, January 17th, and Sunday, January 18th at VCP from 10 am to 4 pm each day. The workshop will be limited to six participants. Details and the artist’s bio may be found at https://vcphoto.org/collodion-workshop/.