I am absolutely in love with Susan Lapides’ project ​“Crustaceans.” This work features portraits of young girls and teens holding lobsters. Yes, you heard me correctly- portraits of young girls and teens holding lobsters. Never in a million years would I have imagined that such an unlikely pairing would steal my heart. First and foremost, this series is sweetly and delightfully funny. However, the success of the work doesn’t just rest in its humor. Lapides has managed to create a series whose premise is simple, and yet, has an unexpectedly nuanced emotional depth.

Lapides’ images call to mind Rineke Dijkstra’s photographs of teen swimmers. Both artists have the skillful ability to capture the subtleties of their subjects. Lapides’ portraits are strange. The girls embody youth- its beauty, its awkwardness, and its transitory nature. The lobsters appear forever old, like a prickly prehistoric creature frozen in time. The girls hold the lobsters in different ways, sometimes triumphantly and sometimes stiffly. The images give the space for the girls and young teens to show multiple dimensions of themselves- their strength, vulnerability, humor, awkwardness and grace.

-Mia

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