{"id":282350,"date":"2026-02-09T16:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T16:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/282350\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T16:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T16:27:09","slug":"lacp-exhibit-reservoir-explores-the-visual-language-of-loneliness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/282350\/","title":{"rendered":"LACP exhibit ‘Reservoir’ explores the visual language of loneliness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The photograph is so intimate, so vulnerable, it\u2019s painful to look at. <\/p>\n

It depicts a woman in her early 20s lying on a hospital bed twisted to the side, her wrists and ankles restrained. The black-and-white image \u2014 nearly five feet wide \u2014 is so crisp that bits of the woman\u2019s toenail polish glimmer and the hair on her thigh appears to spark. Most pronounced: the loneliness and resignation on her face.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was 20 or 21 then. I\u2019d had a psychotic episode and was taken to a public hospital in Massachusetts,\u201d says Palm Springs-based artist Lisa McCord of the self-portrait she later staged. \u201cI\u2019m very transparent and I wanted to share my experience afterward. It was the \u201870s. I\u2019d tell people, in school, I\u2019d been in a psychiatric hospital and no one wanted to hang out with me \u2014 it was a very lonely time.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCord\u2019s work is part of an exhibition at the Los Angeles Center of Photography<\/a> addressing the idea of loneliness, now considered an epidemic <\/a>in America. The exhibition, \u201cReservoir: Photography, Loneliness and Well Being,\u201d<\/a> was curated by LACP\u2018s executive director, Rotem Rozental, and includes participation from more than 40 artists representing \u201ca wide array of geographies, approaches, ages, nationalities and lived experiences,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Rozental had been thinking about loneliness in our society \u2014 how increasingly pervasive it is \u2014 since the start of the pandemic. In late 2024 she began having conversations about it with LACP board chair and artist Jennifer Pritchard. Art reflects the world that we live in and Rozental felt that, as a photography center, LACP had an obligation to amplify \u201csome of the larger issues\u201d our society is grappling with.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something about photography that really brings people together around their vulnerabilities,\u201d Rozental says. \u201cEven if it just means you\u2019re seeing, through an image, that someone else is experiencing what you\u2019re experiencing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this case: loneliness \u2014 \u201csomething that is looming heavy on everybody,\u201d Rozental adds.<\/p>\n

\"Asiya <\/p>\n

Asiya Al. Sharabi\u2019s \u201cInward\u201d (2025) addresses the uncertainty, and sometimes loneliness, of being a woman and an immigrant. <\/p>\n

(Asiya Al. Sharabi)<\/p>\n

Chronic loneliness is a serious, growing public health concern<\/a>, says Dr. Jeremy Nobel, <\/a>a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health <\/a>and author of the 2023 book \u201cProject UnLonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection.\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201cMost recent studies indicate that 50% of Americans are often lonely,\u201d Nobel says, adding that a December 2025 study <\/a>found that \u201cloneliness is increasing, even after the pandemic. And it\u2019s driving a change in behavior, the big one being that people are disengaging from each other and community activities, so that also isolates them.\u201d <\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, chronic loneliness has tangible, dangerous effects on our health, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cLoneliness increases the risk of heart attack and stroke and general early mortality<\/a> by up to 30%. Dementia risk goes up by 40%, diabetes risk goes up 35% from being chronically lonely. That\u2019s increased the urgency to address it as a public health crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to note, Nobel says, that there\u2019s a difference between being alone and being lonely, with the former potentially good for your health.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing alone means you don\u2019t have social connection. Loneliness is the subjective feeling that you don\u2019t have the social connections you want,\u201d Nobel says. \u201cYou can be lonely in a crowd, you can be lonely in a racist workplace, you can be lonely in a failed relationship or marriage. But being alone can actually be quite positive \u2014 solitude. You can be in touch with thoughts and feelings and can have emotional growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nobel consulted with many of the artists during the development of \u201cReservoir.\u201d It was a natural pairing as his more than 20-year-old nonprofit, the Foundation for Art & Healing<\/a>, explores how creative expression helps individuals and communities heal. The experience \u201cdefinitely validated \u2018how do creative people use their creative orientation to further explore and reveal what\u2019s going on with loneliness,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s the power of this exhibit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A detail shot from Diane Meyer\u2019s \u201cThe Empty Space of Nothing #43\u201d (2025)<\/p>\n

(Diane Meyer)<\/p>\n

To create the exhibition, Rozental selected six photographic mentors, all established artists, each of whom chose a theme around loneliness \u2014 \u201caging,\u201d \u201cimmigration,\u201d \u201ctechnology and hyper-consumerism\u201d or \u201cthe solo creative process,\u201d for example. The mentors then invited artists to create new work responding to their themes. Over nine months last year, the groups of artists met monthly on Zoom \u2014 \u201csix countries and seven time zones,\u201d says Rozental \u2014 along with therapists, scholars and others to plumb the topic. <\/p>\n

The resulting exhibition features mostly two-dimensional photography but also includes multimedia works and 3D installations. <\/p>\n

L.A.-based artist Diane Meyer sourced about 100 old black-and-white photographs from private collections. Then she hand-painted each of them, blocking out most everything in the image except select figures with white paint. The individuals in the photos appear to float in a sea of clouds or snow, disconnected.<\/p>\n

In one image, two young boys teeter on a seesaw, as if suspended in midair; in another, a middle-aged man lies on a blanket in the fetal position, white paint spilling over onto his blanket and body, as if he is sinking into a void. The creative process \u2014 which the work speaks to \u2014 is evident here, the artist\u2019s hand noticeable. The paint is splotchy in places and the photographs are pinned delicately to a dark surface, their edges curling, giving the overall installation a textured materiality.<\/p>\n

Meyer\u2019s work is in stark contrast to Jacque Rupp\u2019s installation on the opposite wall. Rupp\u2019s slick multimedia work speaks to both technology and societal perceptions of aging women. After recently becoming a grandmother, the Bay Area-based artist asked AI to \u201cimagine a grandmother in 2025.\u201d The result is a black-and-white photo grid of several hundred female faces staring blankly into the camera, mouths closed and eyes vacant. Beside it is a TV monitor on which their faces morph into one another, without audio. The overall effect is polished and high-tech, touching on the perceived invisibility of women as they age.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt that these two works needed to be in conversation,\u201d Rozental says.<\/p>\n

\"Julia <\/p>\n

Julia Buteux\u2019s \u201cHave We Said Hello\u201d (2025)<\/p>\n

(Rotem Rozental)<\/p>\n

Nearby, Julia Buteux\u2019s three-dimensional installation of transparent fabric panels hang from the ceiling, shimmying in the air and inviting guests to walk around it. The Rhode Island-based artist downloaded images from social media and deleted the people from them. The backgrounds are colorful but all that\u2019s left of the subject is a transparent imprint of their face and upper body. \u201cSo you\u2019re getting the absence of the user,\u201d Rozental says. It speaks to how isolating online social milieus can be.<\/p>\n

Asiya Al. Sharabi \u2014 who is Yemeni American and lives between Egypt and Virginia \u2014 created large-scale, conceptual self-portraits that she manipulated in the printing process. One is a double exposure depicting the front and side of her face. It addresses issues of duality and the uncertainty of her standing in society as both a woman and an immigrant. In another, the artist sits in a rocking chair in a home beside a vase of dead flowers \u2014 but her body is transparent. \u201cShe almost disappears within the domestic space,\u201d Rozental says.<\/p>\n

McCord\u2019s photograph is part of a larger interactive installation that includes a \u201cvisual diary\u201d guests can flip through featuring photographs of her life over the decades paired with handwritten diary entries from 1977 to 2021. McCord narrates snippets from the diary, which visitors may listen to on headphones.<\/p>\n

\u201cReservoir\u201d aims, of course, to shine a light on the condition of loneliness. But it also hopes to serve as a public health intervention by hosting creative workshops \u2014 incorporating the photography in the exhibition \u2014 to address loneliness and spark connection.<\/p>\n

\u201cCreative expression changes our brains<\/a>,\u201d Nobel says. \u201cIt reduces levels of the stress hormone cortisol, it increases the levels of the feel-good hormones, so you\u2019re less anxious about the world and in a better mood. It\u2019s then easier to engage with others. It invites us to be less lonely and more connected, not just to other people, but ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exhibition, which closes March 14, is planned to travel internationally, including to the Museo Arte Al L\u00edmite<\/a> in Chile, the Inside Out Centre for the Arts <\/a>in South Africa and to the Karuizawa Foto Fest<\/a> in Japan. The goal is to use the workshop element as a model that can be replicated in community arts organizations around the world.<\/p>\n

Rozental says photography is the perfect conduit for that, calling the medium \u201ca language, a space for connection and communication.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope that people will walk into this space and see themselves on the walls,\u201d she says. \u201cMaybe their burden will ease a little bit by knowing that they might feel lonely, but they\u2019re not alone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The photograph is so intimate, so vulnerable, it\u2019s painful to look at. It depicts a woman in her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[3257,437,434,435,436,144995,438,146,7506,25213,85,46,40925,144996,1266,48723,2081,144998,144997,144994,144999,5175,1264],"class_list":{"0":"post-282350","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-artist","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-black-and-white-image","14":"tag-design","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-exhibition","17":"tag-face","18":"tag-il","19":"tag-israel","20":"tag-loneliness","21":"tag-nobel","22":"tag-people","23":"tag-photograph","24":"tag-photography","25":"tag-public-health-concern","26":"tag-reservoir","27":"tag-rotem-rozental","28":"tag-white-paint","29":"tag-woman","30":"tag-work"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}