Known for her multi media installations and performance based video vignettes, Johnna MacArthur has brought her love of process, endurance, and courted interruptions to I & Thou. The project’s title, appropriated from Martin Buber’s acclaimed classic, recalls Buber’s notions of standing in relation to an Other and to the inherent complexities of this mutable exchange.

Between You and Me is a selection of 30” x 36” C-prints and 11” x 14” silver gelatin prints culled from the artist’s expanding database of people she has known between 1972 and 2004. Ms. MacArthur invites her subjects to make a portrait at a location of their choice. She transports her 4×5 camera and lighting equipment to settings as varied as bedrooms and mountaintops where she arms her subjects with the cable release. Prior to the moment of “click,” MacArthur asserts herself as the photographer through dense composition and by directing the subject’s gaze toward her rather than the camera’s lens.

For those individuals who have died prior to being photographed, or for those who have declined to participate, MacArthur generates an image of their first name. These alternate images are placeholders for those who cannot be excluded.