Amy Arbus uses photography to evoke the classical paintings of Picasso, Modigliani, Balthus, and Ingres, bringing the subjects to life.

A series of her photographs, After Images, is featured in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum April 9 through June 2. An opening reception with the artist is April 11, 7-8:30 p.m.

"I chose portraits that I found emotionally intense and heartbreakingly beautiful," says Arbus.

She then photographed actor friends and other models to reflect those paintings.

"Re-enacting a painting requires a very deliberate kind of scrutiny," Arbus says. "It felt like dissecting and re-assembling. I was always too intimidated to create portraits in the style of another photographer, yet ironically with this series, in taking liberties from the original, I feel I was able to make my most unique body of work yet."

"When people first see them, they aren’t sure if they are looking at paintings or photographs."

Arbus describes her technique. "I learned how to create very soft lighting, imitate the skewed perspectives in the paintings and which colors for skin wouldn’t translate well into photography," she says. "It wasn’t until I was on the set that I felt like I knew exactly what I wanted."

"Occasionally, I would know within minutes that a picture wasn’t going to work, that all the elements wouldn’t come together, so I would move on."

Arbus says she and the actors discussed what might have been happening in the life of the subject of the painting to access a level of empathy.

"To me, they are paintings come to life," she says.

As for continuing the series, Arbus says, "I see this particular body of work as being complete, but inevitability it will inform whatever I do next."

Arbus has published four books, including the award winning On the Street and The Inconvenience of Being Born. The New Yorker called her book, The Fourth Wall, her masterpiece. Her advertising clients include Chiat/Day, Foote, Cone and Belding, American Express, Saatchi & Saatchi, SpotCo, New Line Cinema, and Nickelodeon.
Her photographs have appeared in more than 100 hundred periodicals around the world, including New York Magazine, People, Dazed and Confused and The New York Times Magazine.

She teaches portraiture at the International Center of Photography, Maine Media Workshops, and The Fine Arts Work Center.

Arbus is represented by The Schoolhouse Gallery and The Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts. She has had 22 solo exhibitions worldwide and her photographs are a part of the collection of The National Theater in Norway, The New York Public Library, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

This exhibition is sponsored in part by Digital Silver Imaging

Amy Arbus and Gallerist Mike Carroll of the Schoolhouse Gallery in Conversation and Gallery tour at 7 PM on April 12, 2013 at the Griffin Museum of Photography. $7 Griffin Museum and ASMP Members, $10 Students, $20 Nonmembers. (purchase tickets)