
Diane Durant
Mental Pictures
Ft Worth Community Arts Center [link]
Ft. Worth, Texas
Questioning history and truth with more than a sly nod to theorists Derrida, Saussure and Sontag, Durant’s textual images belie easy consumption. Meticulously printed and framed, the photographs challenge the viewer to imagine their own pictures, as well as reconfigure assumptions about the function of an image and caption. Spare and lush, her prose reflects southern childhood experiences of wonder tinged with disappointment–the power of words to inspire and destroy. Yet the work transcends the personal; semiotics be damned, the language is coded with cultural nuances. Butter Everything, Let It Melt and Because…reverberates as apt metaphors for our current political culture.
~ Colette Copeland
images courtesy of the author



