- Artist or Maker
- Susan Rankaitis
United States, Massachusetts, Cambridge, born 1949 - Title
- Untitled
- Date Made
- circa 1990
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print with toning and acrylic on steel
- Dimensions
- Mount: 44 15/16 × 34 15/16 × 1/16 in. (114.14 × 88.74 × 0.16 cm)
Primary support: 39 1/16 × 28 11/16 in. (99.22 × 72.87 cm)
Image: 39 1/16 × 28 11/16 in. (99.22 × 72.87 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2024.159.8
- Collecting Area
- Photography
- Curatorial Notes
Susan Rankaitis’s subtle, tonal monoprints exist midway between imagery and abstraction, color and noncolor, photography and painting. Her works, which she defines as “combined media,” begin as sheets of photographic paper whose structure she alters through a variety of chemical and nonchemical processes, creating unique pictures with a timeless sense of depth. Manipulating her imagery at every stage, from photographic negative to final print, can often take several months. She brushes on emulsions or various metals to add toning, and often incorporates additional cameraless imagery—photograms—layered on top of the primary photograph, all of which conspire to produce seamless surfaces that deny just such a cataloguing of materials and technique. Aeronautical iconography is embedded among the abstract chromatic striations in her work, references to the aerospace industry’s presence in Southern California. Layers of sensuous metallic tones appear both natural and otherworldly, and are another reference to the military superstructure that helped define the region with its contrary technological achievements in both beauty and destruction.
Eve Schillo
2020/2024
- Copyright
- © Susan Rankaitis, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA, by Kristina Simonsen
