Eileen Cowin’s work has been loosely categorized as mise-en-scène photography. But overall it is far more self-reflexive, deeply deconstructed and concerned with the relations of language to the apprehension and (re-)construction of reality. 

More recent work has introduced still richer layers of ambiguity: alternately stark and lush, the elements of suspense more pronounced, however contradictory, the mise-en-scène more sophisticated and brilliantly chromatic—though in “Do Nothing Until You Hear From Me,” her new work at GCC, the affective tone is, above all, gray. 

Knock begins with an abrupt dislocation. An establishing shot of a pleasant urban overlook fades to black-and-white; a quick cut to an abandoned shed is flanked by a tracking shot past fenced enclosures and a tangle of woods. The narration instructs, “Imagine any big city… And imagine all human beings swept off the face of the earth.” In a dimly lit domestic interior, a figure: “except for one man.” A dream space made realistic by maudlin detail—pants undone, spectacles that inexplicably disappear, a terrier, the man apparently staring at a screen—and suddenly there is “a knock at the door.” Time stops or slows: a cup shattering in a kitchen sink, a bowl abandoned.

Eileen Cowin, Joke (2018), courtesy Glendale Community College.

There is no knock, actual or symbolic, in Summons; a woman’s head emerges from a void, flanked by expanses of ultramarine bed-linen. The voice is internal, the subject’s own (and, as in Knock, unheard by the viewer: words and actions are given in subtitles). Here, too, another bisection—this time returning us to that gravel road and the fenced parkland, now identified as an abandoned zoo plucked from memory.  Cowin frustrates our dream interpretation with micro-reversals. The subject declares herself an adept liar, until “stripped of all secrets.” The segment closes on the abandoned blue pillow—an emptied dream space. 

Finally, in “This Is How It Was This Is What Happened,” the view is of the (male) subject’s hermetic apartment.  He gazes furtively at a building next door, traumatized by a break-up.  Again, details make their contradictory assertions: three pristine white shirts in a closet (he’s wearing one of them); the fire escape on the building next door; a television screen glowing glacial blue with a suggestion of alpine adventure. 

Cowin intercuts this narrative with a “hate hour” clip from the 1984 Michael Radford-directed film of Orwell’s 1984—a kind of visual scream from a hypothetical Ministry of Truth. The subject sweats, and we’re told, “For the first time, he perceived that if you wanted to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.” 

All of this might be viewed as dream imagery, but the underlying texts (not merely Orwell, but P. D. James, Anthony Marra and Herta Müller) suggest subtle overlaps, specifically with respect to the traps humans set for themselves between their apprehension of reality and their ”correction.” Truth, it turns out, is a subtle business—more often gray than black-and-white. The inspired title, borrowed from the Duke Ellington standard, underscores the fraught, multiple ambiguities at play. By all means pay “attention to what’s said.” Cowin also urges us to pay attention to the way it’s said.