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Susan Ressler: A Life in Photography
The exhibit will feature an informal talk by Ressler on opening day, Oct. 11 at 4 p.m., followed by a reception from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Her recently published book, "Susan Ressler Photographs: 50 Years, No End in Sight," earned third place in this year’s International Photography Awards competition, while her photo of an Algonquian family, shot in Quebec, Canada, in 1973, won a prestigious Best of Show in the same competition. Images from Ressler’s new book and other award-winning photographs will be on view at the nonprofit Photographer’s Eye Gallery on Fridays and Saturdays, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., until closing on Nov. 1.
Ressler first attracted notice when she lived among the Algonquian on a First Nation reserve in Quebec, Canada, documenting their lives and harsh conditions. She was “adopted” by three families who spoke a French dialect that Ressler didn’t understand, so they communicated nonverbally.
“We became very close and they let me into their lives, and that led to my first body of work,” Ressler says. “All of my work deals with issues around social justice.”
She was not yet 25 years old, and the experience had a profound effect on her. She had found her calling, and she never looked back. She was walking in the footsteps of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and W. Eugene Smith, all of whose work influenced hers.
After her Canada experience she was admitted to the University of New Mexico Master of Fine Arts program, and began photographing Western themes, like cattle auctions. But one day she walked into a bank and saw it differently from the way she had seen it before.
“I realized I came from an upper middle-class background, and I wanted to flip the script for documentary photography and photograph the wealthy,” she says. “That’s what really propelled my career, was that realization and that change.”
She also felt she needed to go to California, where she became the only woman photographer, out of eight total, participating in the Los Angeles Documentary Project in 1979, which was funded by a National Endowment for the Arts grant for the city’s bicentennial. Her emphasis: Fortune 500 companies.
California, particularly Southern California, has remained the relentless target of Ressler’s lens, which has journaled the glorious color and raging excess that epitomizes this part of the country, juxtaposed with the people who strove and often failed to catch the rising wave of wealth.
Her photos shot in LA corporate offices and of everyday life in Southern California produced two books, "Executive Order," and "Dreaming California." The Photographer's Eye retrospective will show works from all these. Ressler’s work has been shown and collected extensively, including at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
