Toni Pepe (Winthrop, MA) earned her MFA in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY in 2008. In 2007, Pepe's work was selected for two regional juried offerings: the New England Photography Biennial at the Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham, MA and the Annual Juried Exhibition at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA. Pepe most recently had her solo commercial debut at the Bernard Toale Gallery in spring of 2008.

Artist Statement

“It's my dream. A world where all would be silent and each thing in its last place, under the last dust.” - Samuel Beckett, Endgame

Absence and presence is a recurring theme within this series, implying that each image works to reference something beyond the frame. Photography best portrays this thematic approach since by nature; photographs possess a fundamental quality of absence. All of the elements within the frame —the props, costumes and gestures prompt the notion and tangibility of loss and memory. If we had never met, could I still have a memory of you? Can we make present something that is absent?

A variety of performative devices from theater, cinema, and literature reconstruct visions and moments experienced within the walls of the character's mind. References to memory are embedded in her gestures and body language. Though the poses are appropriated from family photographs, at the same time they evoke the classical and art historical. Recurring motifs such as dust suggest the past, calling to mind the idea of remains and decay. In addition , the embroidered napkins emphasize the notion of memory, domesticity and the familial. The lines of text along with the truncated narrative approach underscore the ambiguity of memory and the inability to organize it linearly.

- Toni Pepe

Click on each image for larger version and caption.