Pamela Bannos

(b. 1959; resides Chicago, IL)

from Some Untitled Pictures, 2006

from Some Untitled Pictures, 2006

from Some Untitled Pictures, 2005

In these pictures I am interested in revealing something that was not the apparent intention of the original photographer. – Pamela Bannos, December 2006

By sharpening some elements and blurring the rest, the pictures in Pamela Bannos’ series Some Untitled Pictures reinterpret snapshots found at flea markets and on internet auctions. In changing the focus, this technique shifts the relationships within the frame by emphasizing people otherwise caught on the sidelines or in the background of a scene. The accentuation does more than elevate the marginal, however. Whereas the original photographer was responding to a moment in the present, Bannos responds to an image from the past. That remove lends special weight to her selections, as if recalling ghosts and memories, foreshadowing later events, or perhaps even trying to change the past. Some figures salvaged from the surrounding haze seem to be safely preserved in time, while others seem all the more vulnerable for their isolation.

Currently a senior lecturer at Northwestern University, Pamela Bannos holds a BA in psychology and sociology from Drake University, Des Moines, IA (1981) and an MFA in photography from University of Illinois at Chicago (1987). She has been recognized as an Artadia Awards in the Visual Arts Finalist; an American Academy in Rome Visiting Artist; and with an arts Midwest / NEA Regional Visual Arts Fellowship in Photography. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York; University of Notre Dame, Indiana; and The Photographers’ Gallery, London. Her work is included in the collections of the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois; Illinois State Museum, Springfield; and both the National and International Archives of Polaroid Corporation.

- Kendra Greene

http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~plbannos