When did you last spend time getting to know…you? It's a serious question, and one that a Central Florida-based artist is here to help you answer.
David Lawrence is the portrait photographer behind the pop-up exhibit “Finding Oneself” at the Orlando Museum of Art. It’s happening in tandem with a portrait exhibition inside OMA organized by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. It’s all about centering the people who participate one by one, and allowing them time to contemplate themselves via a portrait and a series of writing prompts.
Lawrence and OMA’s Maureen Walsh describe the experience and how it can help people examine and share their stories.
David Lawrence:
Basically, you come to the Orlando Museum of Art, it meets you at the entrance, you come up to my little table, and you get to sit for an instant portrait and the photo gets spit out right in front of you. And then you're given the journal prompts, and you're encouraged to go sit and spend some time doing some internal reflection while also looking at your photo. And then eventually it gets projected on to the wall at the museum. It lives there all the time and just cycles through everyone that has participated in the project.
Nicole Darden Creston:
Maureen, how did this partnership evolve?
Maureen Walsh:
So we've had the opportunity to work with David maybe a couple of times before. He's been kind enough to come and sit in on a couple of our events and take portraits of attendees. So we had a little bit of a relationship established. And then in April, we were fortunate enough to open an exhibition called the Outwin: American Portraiture Today from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. And we found that it was a good opportunity for us to work with David again, and do sort of this installation and have him come in and do his portraits. It brings together all of these different representations and subjects in the exhibition. And it paints a picture of the social landscape right now and brings people all kinds of backgrounds and offers an opportunity for people to relate their experiences to what they see in these portraits.
Nicole Darden Creston:
David, I see here in the description of your work, the phrase no one is ever excluded. Can we talk a little about that?
David Lawrence:
Yeah, I think that it's really easy for us as a society to just cut people out when they don't look like us or don't agree with us or are living differently from what we're used to. Or even sometimes, what we deem as acceptable. And I really want to create a space where anyone can exist as themselves. I think there's a really good project in Europe that I like a lot, I don't know, Europe is a whole entire continent. But somewhere in Europe, I don't remember the country where every day, they have these little like sit-downs, it's called a library of people or a library of humans or something like that. And every day, there's a whole entire list of people in their library that you can sit down with. And it's people that are like trans, or like ex convicts, or like a single mom, or like a mom of four. And you get to like literally pick someone from the library and sit down and have a conversation with them. And I love that, because it's giving opportunity to all walks of life to be known and know others. And I think that's just like incredibly essential to grow as humans and evolve in healthy ways.
Nicole Darden Creston:
And also within this is people knowing themselves first, or meeting themselves. That's your work, right?
David Lawrence:
Yeah, that's definitely always the goal. I think that without a grounding, like the grounding of getting to know ourselves, ultimately, it's gonna be really hard to competently navigate the rest of the world and engage with others. And so I think if people aren't able to first meet themselves, they're not going to be able to fully meet others in the world, and confidently tackle even day to day life. And so I think that when we lose touch with who we are as our own individuals, we kind of lose touch with everything else.
Maureen Walsh:
I think in the reflection piece - I love this question, David, I think this is my favorite one. "What are you most proud of about the person in the photo?" And I think it's so easy to forget about all the good things that you do and the good person that you are. It's such a conflicting world. It's hard out there and there's something for all of us to be proud of. Every day is an accomplishment. And like you said, that offers that point of connection. You know, there's relevance in the difficulty that everybody experiences. And so being able to sit down and say, You know what, I'm really proud to be a mom, or, I'm really proud of the way I get involved in my community and stand up for other people or myself, I think that's a really strong point of connection for people.
Nicole Darden Creston:
It also takes a lot of courage for people to look at themselves and write about themselves. What have people told you about the experience?
David Lawrence:
A lot of people will start out by saying that they don't want to do it, or that they don't like being photographed. But then it seems like people come back like even this past week, there were like two or three people that filled up a whole entire page of writing. And they were just like, Oh, man, thank you for helping me create time for me just to sit with myself, like I really needed that, this is really, really powerful. Like, this is really cool. I didn't realize how much I needed that. And then sometimes people don't say anything. And I think that's also just as valid because it's really not about me or the museum or anyone else. It's just about the person getting to sit with themselves and have personal time. And I think that not hearing anything is also really powerful as well, or so I hope. So I want to believe. [laughter]
Nicole Darden Creston:
What would you like people to take away from this experience?
David Lawrence:
At its simplest level, I think I just want people to know that taking time to take care of yourself and acknowledge who you are, and the goodness that you have is very essential, almost like a non-negotiable act of being human. And there are very accessible ways to be able to sit with yourself and rest and celebrate your accomplishments, or just simply observe who you are. And people are doing that in a public space. And this exhibit created space to be themselves.
Nicole Darden Creston:
The mechanics are easy, but making the time is sometimes hard.
David Lawrence:
Yeah, it is. Making the time is hard. Everyone has their own responsibilities. But I hope we're in control of our lives.
Maureen Walsh:
I think it's really easy to get caught up in every day. And it's easy to make an excuse to not sit with yourself and not think about who you are. I think there's some fear in that and realizing like, oh, wait, am I good person, or you know, whatever the question may be, but if you take five minutes to sit and say like, Yeah, I do like this about myself, it is important, but it is so easy to get caught up in a million and a half other distractions to not do that.
David Lawrence:
I see that every day. I'm just like, Oh, I've got to go to this meeting. I have to feed myself. I have to feed other people. But I don't think it's impossible. I think sometimes we need to be pushed, but I think if we're pushed enough, we can make choices to even take two or three minutes. Just sit with ourselves, even if it's just like taking a quiet moment to breathe. But it is difficult, but it's not impossible.
