Gitterman Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of vintage gelatin silver prints by Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, on view from April 14 through June 6. Bringing together a selection of the artist’s evocative photographic works, the exhibition highlights Thorne-Thomsen’s distinctive ability to merge staged imagery, landscape, and symbolism into hauntingly poetic visual narratives.

Known for her imaginative and meticulously constructed compositions, Thorne-Thomsen created photographs that blur the boundaries between reality and dream. The artist often staged photographic images within natural environments before re-photographing them, producing seamless surreal scenes charged with mystery and emotional depth. Through this layered process, familiar landscapes become psychologically resonant spaces populated by fragmented figures, symbolic gestures, and enigmatic references that allude to mythology, memory, and collective history.

Thorne-Thomsen’s photographs invite viewers into contemplative worlds where narrative remains intentionally open-ended and interpretation unfolds through atmosphere rather than direct explanation. Her works seem to function as visual traces of dreams or subconscious states, offering insight into the complexities of perception, identity, and human emotion. Through their quiet intensity and carefully orchestrated ambiguity, the photographs continue to reveal the enduring power of staged imagery as a means of exploring inner psychological landscapes.

I create visual metaphors for experiential states through images from multiple sources, using photography to create the unity of a visual field that is the illusion of reality. Some see this effect as a contradiction of the medium’s ability to create a sense of actuality; in fact, it is this very contradiction that excites me. As an artist I explore internal and meditative states of mind arising from the fabric of my personal experience. I use images that attract me and arrange them and photograph them through a pinhole aperture. This sometimes playful approach allows me to create imaginary realms that suggest, rather than describe, paradoxical states. While my images derive from personal choices they aim at evoking universal experiences. My working process changes with the needs of the work.

(Ruth Thorne-Thomsen)