Looking through Wood River Blue Pool is slightly painful. Some of the portraits feel too intimate — as if Jo Ann Walters had captured neighbors or cousins, maybe myself. Laura Wexler’s essay and Emma Kemp’s companion book give a powerful context: voicing the moral pain held in and around the pictures and our lives. The book is dark, poignant, and humorous. I think of Walters as the Flannery O’Connor of photography.
S. Billie Mandle is an artist and educator based in Western Massachusetts. www.billiemandle.com