Terre Haute Couture - Photographs by Molly Burkett

I attend the 3rd Thursday poets, who meet at Coffee Grounds once a month to read poetry. This month, the reading was immediately after the reception for the photography exhibit on the walls of the Coffee Grounds entitled - "Terre Haute Couture" - the Photography of Molly Burkett. I fell in love with it instantly (and bought two of the pieces myself). Now I don't really know Molly (although I know her mom, and the art curator who choose to put her stuff up at the Coffee Grounds), so I can flatter her shamelessly. Here is a great young photographer, with an eye for bringing out both the visual interest and the emotional depth in her subjects, skilled at seeing what others miss, and teasing it out into the light.

Here is her website www.mollyburkett.com, although only a few images from this show are on it. Go to Coffee Grounds and see her show before the end of the month, go to her site and page through her portfolio. Terre Haute Couture shows many of the young people of Terre Haute, and shows their hearts. Molly quotes photographer Nan Goldin "The only people I photograph are people I really love." The show includes two punks having a long talk in a graffitied tunnel, girls chatting and smoking in Georges Cafe, teens in custom street clothes, one of Molly's ex's smoking a top a parking garage looking into the distance thinking, burning graffiti hearts, and more. Go see it. Swoon. See what Terre Haute looks like through the eyes of someone who loves her people. One of my favorite movies is Wem Winder's "Until The End of the World" which contains a long meditation on the nature of seeing. One of the lines is "The eye does not see the same as the heart."

Molly is moving away soon, but her photography remains as a testament of what she loved about this town.

Just one more reason I'm proud of Terre Haute.

P.S. My friend Brianna Pizarek, who recently moved away from Terre Haute to be with her hubby for grad school, reminded me of a great list of things she loves about Terre Haute that she wrote up back in March.  I'll be mining it slowly for topics for a while I suspect.