Chrysanne Stathacos

Chrysanne Stathacos has updated the nineteenth-century paradoxical impulse to utilize photography in support of the unseen. Her portraits include holy men and women photographed on the banks of the Ganges, Tibetan refugees in the mountains of Dharamsala, Buddhist monks in the hills of Kyoto, and Sikh families living in Long Island. By attaching a biofeedback device to her subject, a thermal/electrical charge is sent into the camera while the exposure is being made, resulting in a kind of double portrait that shows both the face and the prismatic aura of the sitter. When called upon to interpret the colors, Stathacos demurs; rather than predetermine the meaning, she prefers to allow the glowing portraits to suggest and resonate. The aura or halo is a universal symbol of holiness; one cannot imagine the history of Western art without its endless bounty of heads aglow with shining discs. The aura/halo confirms what most of us would like to believe (human history to the contrary)—that life is sacred. Stathacos’s imagery reminds us that despite ethnic, racial, religious, class, and gender differences we are all vessels of the divine (and we should behave that way).

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