Janet Russek

Using the camera as a tool of metaphor and personal discovery, Russek reveals our human frailties and beautiful vulnerabilities, even as she celebrates our life force. —Kristin Barendsen in Photography: New Mexico Seed sprouts, shoot reaches, flower blossoms, and the plant relishes all the fullness of life. But soon, its petals drop, its stalk withers, and the plant returns to the earth. The life cycle, with all its promise and poignancy, is the subject of Janet Russek’s long-term project The Tenuous Stem. Using only natural light, Russek photographs forms alluding to the fullness of pregnancy—ripe squashes, peaches, pears. Egg yolks and ginseng roots hang suspended within vessels of liquids as beings in a womb. Some images hint at decay, suggesting later stages of a woman’s development such as menopause and old age. Russek then moved into figurative work in two series on nude pregnant women and dolls. She photographs the women at close range so that bellies and breasts become abstracted, yet suffused with a divine glow, capturing her belief that “pregnancy is about hope, faith, and love.” The portraits of dolls, however—pale figures suspended in a black void—explore the darker aspects of parenting and of human vulnerability. Janet Russek worked with photographer Eliot Porter as his assistant from 1980 until the time of his death in 1990, curating his exhibitions and working on many of his publications. In 1980, Russek and her husband, David Scheinbaum, founded Scheinbaum and Russek, Ltd., private photography dealers. Along with its large inventory of contemporary and vintage works, the company exclusively represents the estates of Porter and of Beaumont and Nancy Newhall. Russek and Scheinbaum have collaborated on two books, Ghost Ranch: Land of Light, and Images in the Heavens, Patterns on the Earth: The I Ching, which won the American Association of Museums award for design in 2005. The Tenuous Stem, published by Radius Books is a monograph on the last 4 series of work which Russek started in 1993, and will be out the Fall of 2013. Russek was a founding member of the New Mexico Council on Photography, and she has served on the boards of the Marion Center for Photographic Arts and the Association of International Photography Art Dealers. Russek’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Art, Santa Fe, the Bibliotecque Nationale, Paris, and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.