Ruth Thorne-Thomsen: Within This Garden, Photographs

For Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, photography is theatre: the alleged credibility of the photographic image signifies to her a myth by which to "palm off fantasy as reality" while leading us to the kingdom where the human psyche dwells.

Using a pinhole camera she constructed to achieve infinite depth of field, Thorne-Thompsen-a third generation woman photographer-creates images of the spirits quest for integration. In compositions at once mysterious, witty, and erudite, Thorne-Thomsen deftly employs archetyping, appropriation, and manipulation to invent landscapes where the individual and collective unconscious merge in an alluring and spirited dance.

Ruth Thorne-Thomsen is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowships. Denise Miller-Clark has been director of The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, since 1986, and Mark Strand is a Poet Laureate of the United States.