Dark Messengers by Tarrah Krajnak
Dark Messengers is titled after a 1919 collection by the great Peruvian modernist poet César Vallejo. In Los Heraldos Negros, Vallejo's poetic attention is directed inward to the conflicts and wounds that characterize the modern psyche; as a photographer I turn my lens outward to the wounds and conflicts that characterize the modernity of the Americas. This allows me to engage with the complex histories of modern street and landscape photography as well as my own relationship to this history. Over the last 5 years I have journeyed between my two homes: the American West and South America using my camera to discover traces in the landscape, making visible patterns of inhabitation, loss, and erasure. Dark Messengers is an evolving visual poem set in these troubled, vulnerable Americas, and asks: whose histories are worth recording and whose are not and why?– and how?
Tarrah Krajnak lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
To view more of Tarrah's work, please visit her website.
All images from Dark Messengers are Silver Gelatin Prints, 2.75 x 4 inches on 8 x 10 inch Ilford semi-matte warm tone fiber paper.
