Challenging traditional conceptions of photography, Klea McKenna creates embossed photograms based on haptic, rather than visual, impressions. In a darkroom, she generates each image by pressing light-sensitive paper against an object and thus capturing the item’s textural nuance, then exposing the hand-embossed paper to flashlight beams. Whereas her previous photograms recorded natural objects such as tree stumps and spiderwebs, McKenna’s new body of work focuses on fabrics. “Generation,” her show at Von Lintel, includes 12 photograms derived from vintage and antique handmade women’s textiles of different national origins. A sequined China Poblana from Mexico, a silk Indian dupatta and a Spanish shawl (pictured above) become mysterious portraits of the anonymous women who made and wore them. Shimmering with contrasty gradations, McKenna’s silver gelatin prints of floral embroidery, frayed weavings and dangling threads appear strikingly lyrical. Among her varied compositions, some photograms appear nearly nonobjective, while others are rendered in detail so rich and elaborate that gazing at them feels like peering through a microscope. In Von Lintel’s smaller gallery, Michael Waugh‘s show, “Trust in Me” encompasses five representational drawings composed of handwritten text. Manually copied from bureaucratic documents and treatises, the tiny scrawled words forming each of Waugh’s bucolic scenes are as strategically indecipherable as windy post-truth rhetoric.

Von Lintel Gallery
2685 S. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
Shows run through Oct. 20