Lolie, Jumping on the Bed, 2013 by Winky Lewis
8"x8" ($24) | 11"x11" ($60) | 16"x16" ($240) | 20"x20" ($1,200)
We're thrilled to welcome photographer Winky Lewis to our artist roster with this almost otherworldly contrast-packed print. Giving Lewis' debut edition the thoughtful intro it deserves is writer and editor Marni Katz. Read on!
As summer’s residual humidity mingles with the crisp energy of autumn, we introduce photographer Winky Lewis and her first edition for 20x200, Lolie, Jumping on the Bed, 2013.
Lewis snapped Lolie, Jumping on the Bed, 2013 in the height of summer three years ago during a family visit to a rustic island in Maine, in a wooden house owned by her husband and his sisters. The house is on Isle au Haut, a sparsely populated but oft-visited island in the Penobscot Bay—a three-hour drive plus 45-minute boat ride from Portland, Maine, where Lewis lives with her husband and three children. This house is where her husband spent his own idyllic childhood summers, and where Lewis says, “My kids are in heaven, free to play all day.” And it’s one of her favorite places to take pictures.
Lolie, Jumping on the Bed, 2013 is evocative of summer, childhood, innocence, and abandon. It’s not just a freeze frame of a moment in time, of Lolie suspended in mid air, hair as reckless as Medusa’s. It's a snapshot of a bygone era, devoid of overstuffed schedules and myriads of electronic devices.
The contrast of the light and dark areas of Lolie, Jumping on the Bed, 2013 accentuates Lolie’s total immersion in the moment. We wonder, having absorbed the sheen of the bare quilted mattress, did Lolie run upstairs as soon as the family stepped foot in the house, her mom or dad just having opened the window to let in air? Or is she savoring one last bounce as they pack up, Portland-bound?
Lewis says of the setting, “It is a lovely old, dark room, with the window that provides some lovely light and silhouettes.” She’s not sure exactly when jumping on the bed became a tradition, but recalls that once she captured images of the kids in action a few years ago, it became the bed jump on. But like summer, childhood is fleeing. “My kids are getting a little big to jump on beds now,” she says.
Lewis created Lolie, Jumping on the Bed, 2013 the first year she and her friend and neighbor, writer Susan Conley, embarked on their collaboration that became the book Stop Here. This is the Place, published by Down East Books earlier this year. The journal-like book is an ode to the everyday moments captured on film by Lewis, poetically captioned by Conley.
Lolie, Jumping on the Bed, 2013 is from week ten of Lewis and Conley’s 52-week journal that so poignantly captures the intersection of childhood and motherhood. To Lewis, “the picture is just youth, innocence, freedom, with a touch of the darkness and nostalgia that tinges many of my photos of my children.”
With art for everyone,
Marni Katz
