Fran Forman | Thinking About Photography

Fran Forman

Noir Portals and Portraits of Covid

I create each photo-construction as a ’stand-alone’ rather than part of some preconceived series. However, it’s clear that certain threads connect all my images. Each is a visual narrative that suggests the illusive and liminal state of relationships and settings, as well as a distorted perception of time and space. The figures, often solitary, express the isolation, longing, entrapment, and disconnection endemic in our current lives. Nevertheless, a slash of light through a portal can offer a measure of hope.

I place my subjects in uncertain settings, just out of reach of companionship. In joining conflicting concepts such as realism with illusion and longing with proximity, the images grapple with ambiguities and expand on the noir tradition of exposing fragility and longing.

I pay particular homage to the patterns and abstractions of the mid-century American painter Edward Hopper, whose solitary figures seem absorbed in their interior lives; to the 17th-century Masters of northern Europe, who used light to evoke emotion; the muted interior paintings of Wilhelm Hammershøi; the narrative stills of Gregory Crewdson; and to the foreboding sparseness, alienated protagonists, and stylization of noir cinematography.

On my website you will find my recent book, The Rest Between Two Notes, which includes many more of my images (110 color plates, in fact).

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