Lucinda Devlin

American artist Lucinda Devlin rose to fame in the 1990s with a series of soberly observed photographs of execution rooms in US correctional facilities titled “The Omega Suites.” The images caused a sensation at the Venice Biennale in 2001. One of the motifs had already attracted attention in 1992 when it was featured in a controversial advertising campaign for an Italian fashion label. “The Omega Suites” is one of nine photographic series, along with a video, on view in Frames of Reference, the first large-scale survey to be devoted to Lucinda Devlin in Europe.

Lake Pictures is a series of color photographs of Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes with borders on the state of Michigan and Canada. The pictures--made from the same vantage point during different seasons, times of day or night, and weather conditions--explore the changing character and nature of the lake. There is an interplay of day and season, wind, sun and moonlight upon the reflections and water's surface and the variously colored glows of the atmosphere above.  Precisely bisecting Devlin's square images, the thin line of the horizon suggests the immensity of the space between these two elements, pulling the viewer into the center of the photographs where they converge.

Lucinda Devlin (LD): When I was young, I was interested in interior space, and I used to make a lot of mock-ups and models. I used clay, and I made rooms. I'm not sure why, but I had a real interest in that. When I went to college, I thought I would get a degree in interior design. The school I went to did not have an interior design program, so I became an English major with an art minor. It wasn't until the end of my four years of college that I ended up taking a three-dimensional design course. We were expected to do a project that dealt with time, and I chose to use a camera, and really, that was the beginning of my interest in photography.

Lucinda Devlin's current exhibition at the Eastman Museum, Rochester, is on view until 31 December 2017.  Read a review by Rebecca Rafferty at the Rochester City Newspaper here.

Selections from three series by photographer Lucinda Devlin are featured in this exhibition at the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York: Pleasure Ground (1977-90), Corporal Arenas (1982-98). and The Omega Suites ((1991-97). Best known for The Omega Suites--precisely composed images of execution chambers in the United States--Devlin has devoted her career to exploring the relationship between our bodies and the spaces that they inhabit. She has concentrated in particular on interiors associated with pleasure or pain, creating photographs that draw attention to the power relationships embedded in a room's architecture and decor. At the same time, her photographs function as poignant meditations on the familiar yet extraordinary spaces in which our bodies pass time.  The exhibition will be on view from June 24-December 31, 2017.

In conversation with Curator-in-Charge at the George Eastman Museum, Lisa Hostetler, Devlin will discuss her work on view in Sightlines, Friday, June 23 @ 6pm, Dryden Theatre.

Lucinda Devlin's photographs, in her retrospective exhibition at the Weatherspoon Art Musem, Greensboro, NC, serve as social commentaries on timely and socially relevant issues such as personal rights, the death penalty, and agribusiness. An internationally recognized American photographer who now lives in Greensboro, Devlin began her career in the 1970s during the genesis of color photography in America. At the time, she took up not only color photography, but also the artistic approach that she continues to this day, one that emphasizes an objective or neutral point of view. Devlin also discovered her preferred subject matter: psychologically charged spaces absent of any human figures yet nonetheless signaling contemporary public and private life. Her earliest series, Pleasure Ground, featured droll images of thematic hotel rooms. Subsequent series (Habitats, Subterranea, Corporal Arenas, Field Culture, and Lake Pictures) have continued to probe the meaning of place at such sites as zoos and amusement parks, tanning salons and health spas, hospitals and funeral homes, agricultural facilities and open fields, and lastly, Lake Huron's shoreline. Her most provocative and best known series, The Omega Suites (so named after the final letter of the Greek alphabet), proffered emotive images of sterile execution chambers and the apparatuses associated with them.