The Rest Between Two Notes

By integrating contemporary photography with historical periods and settings around the world, Fran Forman creates a world of illusion. Upon closer inspection, elements of her work that appear ordinary suggest an underlying tension and an aura of mystery. A collection of more than 100 of Forman’s photo-paintings, The Rest Between Two Notes: Selected Works explores life’s liminal and in-between moments—coming and leaving; innocence and confidence; shadow and light; night and day; absence and connection; loss and longing; not quite the past and not yet the future. Portals, both real and metaphorical, frequent her layered, complex, and often dark, dreamlike images.

Forman, a photographic and mixed-media artist of international renown, is recognized for her strong, harmonious compositions and her explosive use of color, light, and shadow. Expressed in the diffused colors of twilight and chiaroscuro, her images blur the boundaries between photography, late Renaissance painting, and film noir. In the same way a cinematographer writes a narrative with movement and sound, Forman tells her story with still images, giving them power through their position and relationships to one another. These relationships speak loudly in her work, eliciting in the viewer emotions of desire, vulnerability, and a desperate longing for connection.

About the Author

Fran Forman is a resident scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as well as in numerous private collections. She is represented by galleries in Boston, Dallas, Austin, California, and Beijing.