SPOTLIGHT: TERRY REED—PORTFOLIO CONTEST WINNER

The images seen here are from Terry Reed’s Windows on the Water, a series he made of people on Washington State ferries “sailing” the Salish Sea during the late 1980s and early ’90s. What lifts these photographs above the banal is Reed’s masterful application of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s (1884–1962) conception of the “poetics of space”—wherein one’s imagination or interpretation can animate a space with spirit and meaning, and how that space in return can seemingly evoke a narrative sense of perception, memory and meditation.

Reed says the seeds for this concept evolved from two previous projects. In one, he “learned surprising things about light, layers of information, transparency and opaqueness.” In another, set in a hot springs, Reed reacted to the “ethereal quality” of steam and reflections on the surface of water that inspired a dreamlike reverie.

“After those two projects, I was primed to fantasize and use reflections and transparency, but this time on glass and water,” he says. “Shadow people often emerged while I was composing—not everyone on the boats was lost in contemplation. Passengers were walking around as well. But my images on the ferries began to fixate more on moments of human stillness, and the seeming interactions and contrasts between people.”

Reed’s perspective and framing deftly isolates the passengers he chose to photograph in the ferry’s cabins, making these spaces seem almost deserted, as if these near-solitary commuters have found themselves on a ghost ship bound for some uncertain port. The photographs’ geometric precision evokes the minimalist modernism of such Michelangelo Antonioni films as La Notte (1961) and L’eclisse (1962). The image grain enhances the sense of place and contributes to a dreamlike ambience.

“I have always liked the look of grain, and I chose developers that made the grain sharp for most of my career,” Reed says. “Even now, in my digital era, I still choose equipment and techniques that allow me to create images that feel like film.”

The multiple windows and reflections inform and enhance all of these dynamics in subtle yet powerful fashion, notably in “Aisle of Dreams,” “Mirrors” and “Passage.” The figures are all seen at some distance, and in fragmentary form—a pair of disembodied heads and arms poking up amidst a seemingly endless row of seats; a woman framed through a cabin window amidst disorienting reflections and shadows; a blink-and-you’ll- miss-him portion of a man’s back glimpsed through a corner of yet another window.

The resulting visual patterns are both hypnotic and deeply meditative. The figures are contained by the physical space, yet somehow transcend this containment on conscious (or unconscious) levels.

Particularly intriguing are the conflicting and open-ended narratives suggested by some of these photographs. In “Satin and Steel,” a young couple in formal dress are captured in a close embrace, enjoying an intimate, happy mood, but one not shared by the seated solitary woman in the left of the frame, submerged in somber shadow. The older couple in “Destiny Unknown” seem to contemplate not only their physical destination, but perhaps their future together. While they stand close to one another, one can imagine an emotional distance between them.

Reed has his own take on the latter.

“’Destiny Unknown’ is probably my favorite image of the 40-plus pictures in this series,” he comments. “As I have aged, I’ve experienced this photograph from different perspectives. At the moment of discovery, there was a pensiveness that stood out to me, in large part because of the woman’s hands. Printing it, I saw them as an older couple, likely a dozen years older than I was at the time, looking into a foggy future and worrying. They may not have been tourists, as I guessed at the time. They may have been going to Seattle to meet with an oncologist for the first time. Or for surgery. We just don’t know. It’s curious how ambiguity works in a photograph. You see them as apart. I see them united by a confrontation with some unknown fear they are facing together beyond just old age.”