Untitled, 1974 (print 1998)

Fiskin’s intimately scaled black-and-white photographs examine the aesthetic decisions behind vernacular architecture, popular culture, and art. Hovering between deadpan documents and concrete manifestations of mental images, Fiskin’s early photographs—of 1920s and 1930s stucco houses, anonymous San Bernardino landscapes, the architecture of military bases, desert landscapes inspired by 1940s Hollywood movies, and 1950s and 1960s “dingbat” apartment buildings—captured the provincial character of the Southern California landscape in which she grew up. While her later images further explore the spectrum between “kitsch” and “high art,” the origins of these investigations can be seen in these early series. Fiskin’s photographs express a personal interaction and engagement with her sub jects, and the small scale of these images—like looking through the viewfinder of a camera—shortens the distance between the viewer and the subject.