Baltimore Photo Space

Back in stock: 4 Sides of the Table by Ruth Lauer Manenti

It is about the time it takes for light to pass through a room, to eat a loaf of bread, or for someone to die. I know I will not live forever. One day there will only be traces of my life left. I too will be fleeting like the light of the sun coming through my window appearing on a piece of glass. Paying attention to all that is passing I know that death is approaching.

4 Sides of The Table was made from 2022-24. In the spring of 2017, I was with my mother in an empty room. The light of the sun was shining through the windows. Her best friend June was at her bedside reading poetry aloud. My mother died a few hours later. Since I could no longer take pictures of my mother, it seemed natural to me to photograph June. I photographed her hands, her legs, from the back, from the front, partial views etc. feeling I could convince myself she was my mother more easily by photographing her in parts rather than in showing her whole figure. During the months that I was visiting June, her daughter unexpectedly passed away. I thought after that she might not want to continue our time together taking pictures, but she did. The camera gave us the freedom we needed to imagine we belonged to each other.

Venezuelan Youth by Silvana Trevale

Produced between 2016 and 2025, Venezuelan Youth is Silvana Trevale’s contribution to her homeland: a testament that distances itself from portrayals of crises to offer a sensitive and profound view of the complexities of Venezuelan identity as seen through the eyes of its youth.

Yet how do you document a place that many dismiss as a ruin even while it teems with life? For Silvana, the eventual answer was to capture children and adolescents who embody incredible light even during difficult circumstances, so that she might transform the trauma of having left her country into a tribute to the strength of those who still remain. In this way, she’s created a book that reflects the Venezuela that truly exists: “the one I love deeply, a wounded and fearful country, but one that still breathes hope.”