Upon receiving a large-format camera in 2012, the American photographer Ruth Lauer Manenti (born 1968) at last accessed a poetic sensibility she had first sought within drawing and painting. Her spectral photographs evoke the ephemeral motion of life and the vertiginous memories it impresses. In her new series, 4 Sides of The Table, made from 2022 to 2024, Manenti continues her meditation upon time's passage. The inciting image for this series emerged from an intimate, sorrowful scene: her mother's best friend, June, reading poetry as Manenti's mother lay dying in bed. In the wake of loss, Manenti found within June a maternal replacement. She began photographing June in segmented parts from various angles: hands, legs, front, back, partial views. When June's own daughter unexpectedly died, Manenti, too, became a replacement. Together, Manenti and June document the poignant work of mourning—the effort to preserve the unseen through new material forms.
Published by RM. Text and photographs by Ruth Lauer Manenti.
Published with PHREE and Ediciones Posibles.
“My mother rarely let me photograph her except in the last week of her life when she changed her mind,” says Ruth Lauer Manenti (born 1968) of her first photobook. I Imagined It Empty is a contemplation of life after death, suggesting the idea that houses can hold people’s spirits.
Ruth Lauer Manenti: I Imagined It Empty