Photography Council Brown Bag Lunch Talk

Carol Isaak

“Write your own narrative”
Carol Isaak, a docent at the Portland Art Museum, is challenged and inspired by the artwork in the Museum. Her photographs, gathered at many distant locations, are a response to thinking about formal structure in painting and photography. The narrative supplied is a mere hint about the story the observer can invent in response to her photographs.  Nothing she makes should be accepted as literal. She invites the viewer into a dialog with the pictures, leading the observer to create a personal narrative.

Portland-based photographer Carol Isaak is an East Coast transplant. In the context of her move, she has found entertaining ways to report on the visual world, inspired by serving as a docent at the Portland Art Museum. Over time, she has accumulated images, at once photographic and painterly, reflecting her education as a painter. Her work has been collected in China and in the US. She has had three one-person shows in Oregon, one at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts, and one as a guest of the Chinese government in Lishui, China. She has been published in both Chinese and American journals, and is a four-time “invitee” into the Blue Sky Northwest Viewing Drawers. Four images were recently exhibited in Blue Sky’s Eclipse exhibition, curated by Christopher Rauschenberg. Four photographs are currently on view at Lightbox Gallery in Astoria.

Free to the public.

Sponsored by the Museum’s Photography Council. Major support provided by Pro Photo Supply.