The Delicate Intimacy of Olivia Parker’s Photography

In Order of Imagination: The Photographs of Olivia Parker, now at the Peabody Essex Museum, Parker creates intimate moments through a variety of subject matter. Throughout the exhibition, delicate details, either gorgeously documented in black and white or digitally manipulated, create visual puzzles that unfold before our eyes.

For a recent series documenting her late husband’s decline into dementia at the hands of Alzheimer’s, Parker examined the clues he left behind for himself, in the form of hand-written notes on scraps of paper. Titled Vanishing in Plain Sight, the heart-wrenching collection of notes, photographed in refracting light beams, gives us a visceral sense of his terrifying loss and the everyday struggle to reconstruct his memories, grasping at what is being lost.

Vanishing in Plain Sight documents the ultimate loss of control for Parker and her husband, John, offering a stark contrast to her other works, many of which are painstakingly arranged. Since her days as a painter, Parker has long had an interest in the tradition of still lives. By engaging with this tradition and its place in art history, Parker taps into a rich vein of cultural references that explore the great quandaries of human existence. Composing scenes of objects chosen for their symbolic and visual value, Parker hints at possible narratives, encouraging us to apply our own stories and morals to them.

Order of Imagination: The Photographs of Olivia Parker, featuring more than 100 photographs, is on view at the Peabody Essex Museum through November 11, 2019.