The Mirrors and Windows of Parker James Reineker's Photography
In conversation with Parker James Reineker about his latest exhibition, "To Watch the Moon Move"
With artworks spread from floor to ceiling, viewers are invited to investigate Fried Fruit Art Space and its newest exhibition, “To Watch the Moon Move,” by photographer Parker James Reineker. This exhibition is a culmination of selected work from three of Reineker’s series, acting as a sensitive exercise in regional and personal exploration through the mediums of photography, collage, and installation sculpture.
In all the works on view, Reineker is deeply entwined with understanding his local landscape and his place in it, but he does not shy away from the difficult conversations. As a self-described white Northern transplant who works as an art teacher in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, he feels a responsibility to learn the history of his landscape.
“Growing up, I was so rooted to where I was from. I was so rooted to place and location and that idea of identity surrounding place,” Reineker said.
During our interview, Reineker brought up the words of John Szarkowski, an American photographer and critic, who classified photography in two categories: mirrors and windows - mirrors being subjective and introspective, and windows being objective and documentarian.
When asked whether his photographs act as windows or mirrors, Reineker couldn’t decide. It’s a big question. After exploring the show, it becomes clear that his photographs take on a question-provoking dance between the two, acting as both at the same time.
The perfect example of this comes in Reineker’s exploration of racial history in the Piedmont region.
Growing up in small-town Pennsylvania and attending Catholic school, he said his education on racial segregation was minimal. It felt a world apart both in time and place.
Coming to the South, he came to live his daily life in the landscape he had learned about, leading him to explore it on a deeper level. In one of his most controversial subseries of work, Desegregation, Reineker explores this history by digitally collaging yearbook photographs from racially segregated Piedmont schools.
In one of the most striking works, Nativity Play, Reineker collages scenes, highlighting the economic and class disparities between schools. While he has received criticism working as a white man creating this series, Reineker is not attempting to erase the racial history of the South by integrating it visually. Rather, he is using this medium and the act of creation to navigate the tumultuous history of the segregated South. In creating these works he is attempting to piece together the moment, exposing the contrasts, not erasing them. More honest than news photographs, he says, yearbook photos reveal a truth about the moment that is otherwise overlooked or forgotten.
Even if it has the “potential to be problematic” as he put it, he notes that he “would rather engage with something and say something than not say anything at all.”
“It still is something that I wrestle with. Is it appropriate?” Reineker said.
He extends his practice into understanding the labor history of the region, such as that of Cannon Mills, a textile manufacturer and major employer in Kannapolis, North Carolina, that was demolished and replaced with the North Carolina Research Campus.
In Amy’s Tattoo, Reineker captures a woman who used to work at the mill. The absence of her face creates a sense of anonymity, and yet viewers are given a personal moment with the subject. For Reineker, he is interested in capturing the people that make a region, but he is not interested in giving a face to a region. As someone with such a different experience, he notes it is not his place to. However, he does explore and reveal the landscape through fragments of people, of places, of history, and Amy’s Tattoo is a beautiful example of this.
In his latest work, Reineker is stepping into a new practice. He is no longer just behind the camera, he is an active agent in front of the camera. In Until it Breaks, he steps in front of the camera to twirl his hair, a bad habit he’s had since he was a kid.
When he spoke about this work at an Artist Talk at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Reineker noted that his wife has said “I wonder how much time you lose twirling your hair.” This sparked an audible murmur amongst audience members.
Typically, twirling one’s hair is thought of as “feminine” and “ditsy.” Now, all of a sudden, it is a man performing the act and a woman telling him that it is a waste of time.
Personal identity is a key facet of Reinekers work, and yet, exploration of his gender is something he is just starting to think about. When asked if exploration of his gender was the intention of this work he said “I do think it is seriously a part of it but I’m not sure yet.”
Growing up with a "boy’s don’t cry” mentality and an absent father, Reineker hasn’t thought much about exploring his gender in such explicit ways. However, the response to his artist talk sparked something. Not sure if it was intentional in Until it Breaks, he says, now his gender might be something that he needs to explore photographically.
That is precisely what makes this show so great. The photographs are a product of the act of making them. Their beauty lies in their documentation of his experience of creating them.
Towards the end of the interview, Reineker said something striking, he said “I’m not creating work to change the world. I’m not interested in that. I just really want to understand how I fit in it, if that makes sense.”
While his intention may not be to make art that changes the world, he still hits that mark in his own way. In using photography as a navigational tool, Reineker gives viewers the opportunity to understand a regional history through a sensitive, subjective lens. Instead of a purely objective photograph, a window, his intricate interplay between mirror and window - his injection of personal experience - richly exposes viewers to not only a subject that may be foreign to them, but also a perspective.
Whether it is a photograph of a photocollage of nativity scenes from segregated schools, a woman’s tattoo, or his hands twirling hair, in “To Watch the Moon Move,” Parker James Reineker’s exploration of the identity of place and time is unapologetically on full display.
The upcoming exhibition in Fried Fruit Art Space, “Desolate Microcasm,” by artist Jave Yoshimoto, will run March 31-June 6. There will be an Artist Talk at University of North Carolina Wilmington March 31 from 3-3:30pm in Friday Annex, room 152 and an Exhibition Reception April 25 from 6-9pm at Fried Fruit Art Space. For more information about past and future exhibitions, check out the Fried Fruit website.