Jo Ann Callis: Woman Twirling

Accompanying an exhibit at The Getty Center in L.A, this volume highlights three decades of work (1970s-'90s) from ""one of the first important practitioners of the Fabricated Photographs Movement,"" Jo Ann Callis. Callis's simple but troubling images of domesticity investigate its potential for both comfort and anxiety; in her introduction, senior Getty Center curator Keller notes Callis's ""Hitchcock-like bent to create a scene subtly loaded with the attractive as well as the horrible."" In a piece titled Woman and Lilies, a woman's face appears in a bottom corner against a background of flowered wallpaper; her placement, lighting, looming shadow and her raised hand indicate, subtly an approaching threat or off-screen tragedy. Another image, Man and Plant, backgrounds its screaming (laughing?) human subject behind a potted house plant; the effect is similar, a ribbon of horror or madness mixed into the seemingly innocuous. A master of creating mood, Callis forces discomfort on an audience used to making narrative sense from a still photograph. Keller applauds Callis's ability to ""make the beautiful scary,"" but this collection shows that the inverse-that Callis makes the scary beautiful-is equally accurate. 55 color and 15 b&w plates.