Gail Rebhan, “About Time”
- Democracy Chain
- Jun 25
- 5 min read
by Liz Goldner
California Museum of Photography, Riverside, California
Continuing through August 17, 2025
All images courtesy of the artist the California Museum of Photography.
While art is often autobiographical, Gail Rebhan’s photographic work in “About Time” is like an open book. For more than 40 years the Washington, D.C.-based photographer has depicted some of the most personal aspects of her life. She recently completed close-up photos of her unclothed aging body in the series, “Living,” physically revealing a woman who regards her entire being as source material for her art.
Rebhan conceived the “Living” series, alternately titled “Reflections on An Aging Self Still Capable of Anger and Surprise,” in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Using intense light to capture the details of her flesh, she illustrates her face in semi-profile, her neck, the bottom of her thighs, knees, arms, elbows, feet and hands, all against black backgrounds. To view these large, intense pictures is to recognize a woman who listens to her own voice, shutting out media messages about maintaining youthful perfection.
Indeed, this exhibition is a bold, direct accounting for the artist’s last four decades, with forays into her childhood, often through collaged photos. “About Time” is about more than the perpetual passage of time on the body. Images feature many people who she has maintained bonds with, along with a range of prosaic and profound scenarios and events.
The earliest series in this exhibition, “Sequential Still Life” (1981) includes intimate domestic photos of Rebhan’s home life early in her marriage, recording her in-laws, husband, friends and two sons. These include shots of her husband just waking up in his PJs, of her mother-in-law serving him, of her family unglamorously dining together, along with pictures of her babies. One photo of her mother-in-law, “Lill showing off her grandson at the Golden Age Senior Center” (1985), resonates with pride.
This series, conveying Rebhan’s interest in small changes occurring in the domestic sphere over time, includes four images of a dish rack on sequential days, “Gail’s and Mark’s Dishrack, January 13, 14, 15, 16, 1981.” Two sets of three photos each of her son’s room are both titled, “Room” (2007), taken when he had come home from college. These photos, shot from above, depict a domestic disarray of laptops, computer mouses, cords, disks, pictures, a squirt gun, and trash strewn about. The image is more than just an anthropological in-joke for the parents of adolescent boys.
Her series “280 Days, 1983-84,” consists of 280 self-portraits of her ever-growing pregnant self, with some images of her standing in a doorway and others looking in mirrors. These sequential shots, culminating with Rebhan showing off her about-to-give-birth belly, display what was, 40 years ago, a startling boldness about the shape of late pregnancy. It’s a case in point about how what we see literally changes with time.
Rebhan also overlays many photos with text that records her personal thoughts. Over her image, “Gray Hair” (1995), of her long unruly hair against a black background, she writes in red, “I am starting to get gray hair. Why does it bother me? Because it makes me look older. What’s wrong with looking older? If I dye my hair I will be giving into what culture dictates about female beauty. Yet I don’t like the way I look with gray streaks. I start looking at other women’s hair color … After much agonizing I decide to dye my hair. No one notices.”
Here also are compassionate photos of her elderly father, for whom Rebhan served as care-giver. These include collage-like photos of the many accoutrements of the trade: Depends, a TV remote, various pills, a phone, chocolates, a package of Hebrew National Salami. In this series, titled “Can’t,” the artist also includes text about what her father can no longer do:“Shave, dress himself, take his medication unaided,” and much more.
Another series titled “What questions do we ask?" goes right ahead and poses at least some of them. Several large photographs of American flags are overlaid with census questions asked, sequentially, for more than a century, revealing how much our world has changed in 200 years. Questions address disability, education, what language is spoken at home, housing, and race. The 1790 census on race asks, “Number of free White males under 16 years, Number of free White males over 16 years, Number of free White females, Number of other free persons, Number of slaves.”
Rebhan’s penchant for activism led her to photograph the project known as the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition (BACC). Members of the 105-year-old Macedonia Baptist Church in Bethesda, Maryland have been protesting, along with white supporters, to have the church’s old cemetery dug up from beneath a cement parking lot and building.
A January 8, 2024 Washington Post article explains, “A long-running dispute over a historic Black cemetery buried beneath a Bethesda parking lot went before the Maryland Supreme Court on Monday … The area was home in the late 19th century to Black families who had worked on Montgomery County’s farms and tobacco plantations since before the Civil War.” (This is just one of many projects nationwide focused on unearthing Black cemeteries and protecting them from development.)
The relentless Rebhan has seen her BACC photographs become widely circulated on social media and appear in Black Agenda Report, Black News Tonight, "Montgomery Magazine” NBC News and WTOP news. As she extends her creative interests to the world beyond her personal life, her photos take on a more visible sense of urgency, addressing her need to expose the growing inequities in the world.
Liz Goldner is an award-winning art writer based in Laguna Beach. She has contributed to the LA Times, LA Weekly, KCET Artbound, Artillery, AICA-USA Magazine, Orange County Register, Art Ltd. and several other print and online publications. She has written reviews for ArtScene and Visual Art Source since 2009.
Yorumlar