Mark Lyn­der­say

Lo­la Flash isn't some­one who stands out in a crowd. She's a woman of medi­um height and close cropped hair who hides her bright eyes be­hind huge glass­es.Not so her por­traits of peo­ple.Flash, in Trinidad from Ju­ly 27 to Au­gust 18, as an artist in res­i­dence at Al­ice Yard, will be pur­su­ing three of her por­trait se­ries over the next cou­ple of weeks and her shoot­ing sched­ule seems set to fill quick­ly.

Salt is a col­lec­tion of en­vi­ron­men­tal por­traits of icon­ic old­er women in their homes. The pho­tog­ra­ph­er is look­ing for sub­jects who are 70 and old­er who have had a qui­et im­pact on their re­spec­tive worlds.For [sur]mise, she hopes to con­nect with, in the words of the Al­ice Yard prospec­tus in­tro­duc­ing her vis­it, "girls who look like boys, straights who look like gays and vice ver­sa.

She al­so hopes to add work to her [sur]pass­ing se­ries, which con­sid­ers the ques­tion of "pig­men­toc­ra­cy," a work she de­scribes as cathar­tic for a light-skinned per­son who has had to an­swer the in­ter­rog­a­tive, "Are you black? Are you African-Amer­i­can?Flash, who has changed her name for­mal­ly and prefers not to get in­to the cir­cum­stances of it, works with a Toyo 4"x 5" cam­era and Fu­ji Provia film, il­lu­mi­nat­ing her work with strobe sources.

"Buy­ing film and pro­cess­ing have both pro­vid­ed chal­lenges, but it doesn't dis­suade me from shoot­ing this for­mat," she said.The [sur]pass­ing work fits square­ly in­to mod­ern con­fronta­tion­al art por­trai­ture. Shot at close range with a nor­mal lens and framed to crop at the sub­ject's up­per thigh, the sub­jects, set square­ly in the mid­dle of the frame are sur­round­ed by back­grounds that drift at the bound­ary of per­cep­tion in the dis­tance, uni­fied by a hori­zon line that bi­sects them all at a point close to the mid­dle of the height of the im­age.

"I would love to do it at the Guggen­heim, start­ing with the bot­tom with lighter-skinned peo­ple and wind­ing all the way to the top with dark­er-skinned peo­ple, sub­vert­ing the tra­di­tion­al no­tions of colour bias," Flash said dur­ing a talk about her work at Al­ice Yard on Ju­ly 30."The work, when mount­ed, match­es the hori­zon lines and it looks like all these peo­ple in­hab­it the same world."

The [sur]mise se­ries us­es the same crop­ping and fram­ing tech­nique but us­es a white back­ground. Most of the sub­jects wear stark black and the pos­ing tends to be more ag­gres­sive in these im­ages, but on­ly sub­tly so.Un­sur­pris­ing­ly, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er be­gan work­ing al­most im­me­di­ate­ly on Salt, with sev­er­al mem­bers of the au­di­ence pos­ing lead­ing ques­tions about the project dur­ing her talk.

It seems every­body's got a favourite tan­ty who would be right for the por­trait project and no­body's shy about propos­ing a sub­ject.That's like­ly to dove­tail neat­ly in­to the mo­ti­va­tions of Lo­la Flash in pur­su­ing the project. For her, fam­i­ly is im­por­tant and she still has fond mem­o­ries of be­ing cared for by her grand­par­ents.

"Salt is about shed­ding light on women who of­ten don't get that light," she said, "women who are opin­ion­at­ed, in con­trol and per­haps a lit­tle ec­cen­tric."Af­ter at­tend­ing the Mary­land In­sti­tute of Art, Flash be­gan 20 years of work­ing with neg­a­tives, do­ing work that, as in­vert­ed colour val­ues and scram­bled the con­cep­tions of her im­ages.

The work didn't have a ro­bust re­sponse from the arts com­mu­ni­ty, though she em­ployed the tech­nique to ex­plore is­sues re­lat­ed to the so­cial im­pact of the Aids epi­dem­ic."I'm still not clear why it nev­er went any­where," she ad­mits, "I've nev­er in­ter­ro­gat­ed the re­sponse to it." Af­ter a failed re­la­tion­ship, she vis­it­ed Eng­land and end­ed up stay­ing in Lon­don for eight years, work­ing for al­ter­na­tive lifestyle pub­li­ca­tions there.

That's where she cre­at­ed the Gay A-Z and be­gan work­ing in colour pos­i­tive ma­te­ri­als.It's al­so where the ideas in [sur]pass­ing were born when she found her­self de­scribed as "the mixed race girl," and she be­gan con­sid­er­ing the in­ter­ven­tions that skin colour has on lifestyles and job ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty.

Both that se­ries and the lat­er [sur]mise ex­plore her com­fort with the way she looks and the per­son she is. The im­ages seek out that con­fi­dence in oth­ers even as they chal­lenge com­mon pub­lic per­cep­tions of her sub­jects."I aim to make por­traits of mar­gin­alised peo­ple, like my­self," she said.

"I want to ex­pose our beau­ty in a way that is not al­ways shown to the pub­lic. These are the peo­ple that have made us proud, sup­port­ed us and made it pos­si­ble most for us to ex­ist, yet so­ci­ety-at-large deems [them] in­vis­i­ble."

While Lo­la Flash has staked out por­trai­ture as her medi­um, she showed two oth­er se­ries at Al­ice Yard, Scents of Au­tumn, pho­tographs about pure colour and tex­ture, and The Quar­tet se­ries, overt­ly in­flu­enced by Piet Mon­dri­an, which jux­ta­pos­es store fronts from coun­tries she vis­its in riv­et­ing quad­tychs that ex­plore sim­i­lar­i­ties in style, colour and tex­ture.

"I thought I'd nev­er take an­oth­er beau­ti­ful pic­ture un­til the Aids cri­sis is over," she said, "then I be­gan to re­think that when she hit 50 and re­alised I had a li­cense to re­lax. I need­ed to stop, to just breathe."But Lo­la Flash hasn't come to T&T for a va­ca­tion. She in­tends to take pho­tographs and a lot of them.

"So far, my re­cep­tion has been very warm," Flash not­ed in a fol­low up email."I'm hop­ing for a big turn out this week­end, Au­gust 7-9, at Al­ice Yard, for my [sur]mise se­ries."

"I've de­cid­ed it would be best to have a 'drop-in' set up, so peo­ple can come when it's best for them. I've shot one old­er la­dy an she was su­per love­ly, her sis­ter-in-law is look­ing for more women, and to­mor­row, I have a shoot for [sur]pass­ing, so I'm pret­ty ex­cit­ed!"

Sug­ges­tions for the [sur]pass­ing, [sur]mise and Salt se­ries are wel­comed at lo­la@lo­laflash.com.

Vis­it Lo­la's web­site at www.lo­laflash.com/sur­mise/sur­mise.html

If you're in­ter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing, please stop by Al­ice Yard (80 Roberts Street, Wood­brook) on Aug 7, 8 or 9 be­tween 5 and 8 pm. Or email Al­ice Yard at hel­loal­ice­yard@gmail.com for more in­fo.