La MaMa Galleria is proud to present, for its opening show of Spring 2019, I’ve got a lot of things to face this month, featuring photographic works by Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. and María José that consider the daily efforts toward controlling one’s life.The title is self-referential; both artists have responsibilities to themselves and their intimate communities, but it also suggests a photographic sensibility that carefully makes space for the inner dialogue and circumstances of the pictured individuals. Each artist renders the everyday through different means. Elliott re-contextualizes the instant in which the photograph is made as a way of pursuing the literary possibilities of the frame, while María’s life experience is folded into the photograph as a matter-of-fact subject, often using images to mark and emphasize sentiment or observation.

Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. visualizes moments of contemplation, self-possession, and other potentially inaccessible elements of human experience. The resulting ambiguity offers the pictured plane a narrative multiplicity that includes, but is not limited to, its biographical origin. The individuals and spaces pictured are often presented informally and with minimal direction, or that which allows for serendipity. This practice considers what couldn’t have been planned for, and, therefore, the limitations of aspiration, ideal, and intention. Through Elliott’s investment in the interiority of individuals and space, the content of the compositions appear at rest in dialogue, transition, or reflection.

María José uses photography to explore themes of tradition, motherhood, medical transition, spirituality, and glamour. She is compelled to use photography as a respite for queer existence, prioritizing safety, comfort, and flexibility in a moment of picture making. Some portraits document specific milestones in life, while others serve to build a fantasy world in which María and the people in her pictures can access more surreal ways of being. The images are, in their style and circumstance, moments of softness, close attention, silence, stillness, and care. In the role of photographer, María gets to direct, pose, and communicate the way she experiences her life.