You Look Like a Hippie, Son

Depending on the cut, the sweep, and the smell, a beard can signify nearly anything: virility, genius, homelessness, irony, talent with an axe, familiarity with barley and hops or high-level math. Beards also signify God, motor oil, and the backwoods. Mostly, though, they scream one thing, especially to their wearers when they look in the mirror: Real man coming through, motherfuckers! Michael Elsden’s photography exhibit, however, takes a new angle, zeroing in on to a tender emotion lodged deep in the hearts of all men, like a splinter: vulnerability. Aww! Taking the delightful name “Pogonophora” (science for “beard worms”), the show features portraits taken with a large-format camera that nose into the tender side of the unshaven masses, such as the downcast Iron & Wine Sam Beam types, whose beards are anything but ironic. Elsden took the shots during his three-month residency at the gallery; he also shows work from another series, "Men as Botanicals,” in which many of these same men sat for black-and-white nude shots. As we said: Real man coming through.
April 10-May 20, 2009