Levee: Photographs by Adrianna Ault

Starting in 2017, Adrianna Ault made a series of car trips with her adolescent daughters from Rhinebeck, NY back to her hometown of New Orleans, LA, a return prompted by her mother’s final battle against lung cancer. Amidst the arduous task of tending to her mother’s needs, Ault captured the familiar scenery of her upbringing through the lens of her camera. The Southern landscape’s atmosphere of transience and fragility became a quality Ault witnessed in her family as they contended with her mother’s imminent passing. Finding and recording those lines of connection resulted in photographs with an off-kilter grace. The hard-won equilibrium between memory, place, and person achieved by Ault speaks to her ability to triangulate the roles of dutiful daughter, nurturing mother, and working artist. 

The title of this collection of images, “Levee,” feels significant on many levels. In its most literal sense, it denotes an embankment built to stem the surging tides of a river’s overflow. Yet, metaphorically, it conjures an evocative notion – the relentless struggle against the implacable forces of nature, the futile attempt to thwart the inevitable. Ault’s approach to composition, her command over a sophisticated palette of colors, and her embrace of imperfections bend the traditional boundaries that delineate the realm of photographic art. 

This body of work was published as a monograph, also titled Levee, in November 2023, by VOID (Athens, Greece).

This exhibition is curated by Adam Giles Ryan.

Adrianna Ault (b.1972) is an American photographer raised in New Orleans, LA. Her practice is deeply motivated by a desire to explore change within grief, time, and the abstraction of memory. ‘LEVEE’, published by Void, is her debut monograph. She lives and works in the Hudson Valley of New York.

“Meet the Artist” with Adrianna Ault
Thursday, January 25, 2024 at 6 pm
474 Broadway, Kingston, NY

Levee: Photographs by Adrianna Ault
Virtual exhibition

Levee
Published by VOID