DETAILS

Issue 4 (January 25, 2022)

Johannes Vermeer, Maid Asleep,1656-57, Metropolitan Museum of Art (creative commons, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).

A young woman sits a table, while a cracked door invites us to peer into the room behind her. As her head rests on her hand and a warm light suffuses the scene, we wonder what she might be dreaming. There’s no way to know.

Or there wasn’t, until X-rays revealed that Vermeer, who painted this canvas nearly four hundred years ago, had originally put a dashing young man in the door. And then he changed his mind and painted him back out. Removing the clue turned a picture that was merely spectacularly beautiful into a work of genius. Now we can dream with the young maiden. We can enter her world.

Sometimes leaving things out allows us to put in more valuable things, like a mood, a dream, or an emotion. Empty spaces fill up when you put your heart in them.

© Bill Travis, Jérémie, photo transfer on mother of pearl, in a 19th-century half case, 3 ¾ x 3⅛ in., 2021.

That aesthetic has always appealed to me. In the picture you see here, I set out to depict a lightly clad young man against a bare, backlit window frame. The piece glows because it’s on mother of pearl. The setting and the light are a fantasy. Detail would trivialize the mood. Leaving things out lets the piece breathe.

© Bill Travis, Wanderer 1, photo transfer on mother of pearl, in a 19th-century half case, 3⅛ x 3 ¾ x in., 2021.

There is no specific setting here, either. This is not a moment in time, but a state of being.

This scene might take place in heaven or hell. You decide. You complete the piece.

I love details. I love the lack of details more. If you are in New York City and want to see these images in person, along with six others, they’re on view at Plaxall Gallery through February 6th. They are also available for purchase here, along with other pieces I’ve recently made.

In other news…

Want to catch up on any newsletters you might have missed? I just put up an archive of past issues.

Please encourage your friends to visit my website and sign up for my newsletter, which is free and comes out once a month.

Please send a note here if you want to attend my free upcoming Zooms:

January 30, 2 pm (EST): alternative-process photography, moderated by Bill Travis, with Ky Lewis, Lynn Bierbaum, Marcy Palmer, and Robert Kalman.

February 18, 12 noon (EST): Bill Travis interviews photographer Robert Kalman about his recent series on contemporary America.