Amy Powell: What once grew straight and tall t’ward the sun is absorbing back down to dirt like a sponge.

Amy Powell, a traditional photographer in both training and practice, presents images of people she has gathered from Instagram, all mapped within the Dayton area and chosen because of their striking composition, absurdity, poignancy, and visually compelling qualities. Powell also develops a connection, albeit fleeting, with each person in the form of a request to use their image in this project.

The installation manifests in a saturation of hundreds of images, portraits, and snapshots culled from social media on the gallery walls. Each image is given a custom frame, adorning this selection of quotidian images with an affectation and sense of importance and purpose. A companion website contains all of these images and a billboard or series of billboards that are also saturated with these found images: a mirror of sorts to the city itself.

The Contemporary Dayton produced a book that parallels all aspects of Powell’s project. Lastly, all of the hundreds of subjects were invited to the gallery to bear witness to their part in the larger context of the completed installation. Collectively, this selection of images taken by hundreds of residents of the greater Dayton area becomes a portrait of a place and its citizens living their lives during perilous times.

Curator: Michael Goodson