Andrea Modica: Extended Moments

Extended Moments celebrates the work of Andrea Modica, a photographer noted for her meticulous craftsmanship and evocative narratives.

Modica, who is the recipient of the Akron Art Museum’s 2015 Knight Purchase Award, teaches at Drexel University in Philadelphia and has received many honors for her work. The artist is noted for her use of traditional processes—an 8 x 10 inch view camera and platinum palladium contact printing—to achieve lush tones and rich visual statements. Modica speaks about the physicality of the view camera and the set-up time required to operate it as necessitating her sustained attention, amplifying her understanding of her subjects. This quality is augmented by Modica’s practice of working in series, which have included explorations of skulls from a psychiatric hospital grounds, rural families in New York and Colorado, teenage best friends, landscapes and Philadelphia Mummers.

Extended Moments focuses on photographs Modica has taken in Italy, where she has spent significant time in Italy since 1990, when she traveled to Sicily on a Fulbright Scholarship. Images the artist has taken in that country on repeated visits represent a range of her interests—women and girls, youth friendships, landscape, still life and—more recently—horse hospitals. Modica speaks of seeking to make compositions that draw viewers in from motifs that are not particularly beautiful in and of themselves. She describes her practice as conceptual, but likewise acknowledges the importance of the physical object in her work.

In Extended Moments, Modica’s photographs of Italy are framed by images from series she has undertaken exploring the lives of families in upstate New York (Treadwell and Pine Plains) and the owners of a slaughterhouse in Colorado (Fountain). Thirty photographs offer insights into the artist’s career, with the prints dating as early as 1986 on view alongside studies from recent projects that are continuing, including studies of Philadelphia Mummers Parade participants and scenes from a horse hospital in Italy. All are distinguished in offering quiet moments and conveying the humanity of their subjects.

This exhibition is organized by the Akron Art Museum and generously supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Anne and Don Palmer.