Flatboat 2022

Julie Blackmon made this image, Flatboat, a large-scale photograph that invites us to float along with her into a world of summery play. Blackmon's compositions are tight, and she manages to pull every little detail into harmony. I’m drawn to the way light glistens off the murky water, reflecting the wooden planks of the makeshift raft. The scene is bathed in the slightly faded glow of a hot summer day, emphasizing the stillness, the calm. The children are arranged in a semi-circle on the raft, each lost in their own reverie. There’s an incredible tension between chaos and control here. The children are all in motion, or in a moment of suspended action, yet the composition feels perfectly balanced, a tableau vivant. Like Rineke Dijkstra, Blackmon documents the everyday lives of her subjects with an unflinching eye, yet there's a sense of the uncanny that permeates her work, reminding us that art is always a form of artifice, a carefully constructed illusion.