JTF (just the facts): A total of 12 photographic works, variously framed and matted, and hung against white walls in the back gallery space. (Installation shots below.)

The following works are included in the show:

• 1 Fuji FC 100 4×5 instant film print, 2024, sized 5×4 inches, unique
• 8 archival pigment prints in stained ash wood frames, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, sized 18×22, 22×27, 27×22 inches, in editions of 3+2AP
• 1 archival pigment print, 2025, sized 40×32, in an edition of 3+2AP
• 1 set of 4 Polaroid Polacolor 559 instant film prints, 2024, each sized 5×4 inches, unique
• 1 gelatin silver contact print, 2024, sized roughly 5×4 inches, in an edition of 10+5AP

A monograph of this body of work was published in 2024 by Stanley/Barker (here). (Cover shot below.)

Comments/Context: One of the running arguments I have with myself is whether we need to know the artist’s personal backstory to fully understand his or her work as an artist. Intellectually, I’d like it to be possible to come to a body of work cold, without any prior knowledge, context, or explanation, and be able to discover its richness and complexity all on my own. But in certain cases, this kind of arm’s length distancing seems altogether delusional – of course we can benefit from knowing more about the artist’s life and perspective, and by doing so, we can then unlock nuances, subtleties, and intentions embedded in the work that we clearly would have missed otherwise. But this approach then potentially limits the range of my reactions – since I know the backstory, there is now one preferential reading of the imagery which incorporates that information, which might be different than the one I would have come to without that help. And so I go back and forth, never quite resolving this dilemma.

If you visit Pia Paulina Guilmoth’s gallery show at CLAMP, and intentionally prevent yourself from reading the handy press release, what you’ll discover is tight selection of mostly nocturnal images, featuring sparkling moons in the night sky, a misty pond, some startled but friendly flash-lit deer, and sprays of illuminated road dust that drift like ghostly spirits. It feels like there is a kind of magic in the air, as seen in delicate glowing spiderwebs gently pulled and extended to reveal their intricate patterns, and in a house torched by roaring flames fronted by a placid white horse looking on with the knowing stare of one who won’t reveal the secret. Nearby, when the sun is up, female figures lounge in the grass and mud covered bodies couple with tenderness. Seen together as a sweep of pictures, Guilmoth has presented a largely bucolic and momentarily astonishing secret world filled with natural wonders, but with an undercurrent of something like menace lingering in the dark.

There’s one other image on view, down in the corner of the gallery, capturing a pair of white moths as they circle a brightly dripping candle flame. As visual symbols go, it’s a pretty direct one – the moth that instinctually heads for the light of the flame, only to potentially burn up in its heat, and more broadly perhaps, the natural instincts that drive us to do things that might inadvertently be dangerous, but that we potentially can’t avoid. The title of the picture is “girl pills 6mg, 1.5 years”, and with that not-so-hidden clue, it’s time to go read the press release and get the fuller backstory.

In summary form, it turns out that Guilmoth’s project “Flowers Drink the River” documents her first two years of gender transition, which has taken place in Maine where she lives. That particular landscape – out in nature, in the woods, down empty dirt roads, with wildlife nearby – provides the resonant foundation for her life. But her roots in a predominantly conservative rural town, where the personal struggles she is facing aren’t widely welcomed or understood, adds another layer of tension and anxiety to her transformative process. As she’s become a new version of herself, she’s had to renegotiate her relationships not only with art making and personal expression, but with the community that surrounds her.

When we return to the photographs, each of the images is now more overtly freighted with the emotional and metaphorical weight of what Guilmoth has been experiencing. The multiple exposure images of the night sky not only mark the slow passing of time, but seem filled with the optimism and dream-like hope associated with waiting for something better in the future. The gossamer spiderweb images certainly continue to feel even more delicate and fragile, but the collaborative force of other female hands helping to stretch them out (and decorate them with wildflowers) makes the effort feel communal and supportive. This mood then turns toward more open desire and attraction in the images of bodies, where casual confident beauty and female dominance become the subject. Only when we come back to the images of the burning house, the mysteriously shifting surface of the pond, and the spectral figures in the road, not to mention the more direct perils of the moth near the flame, does Guilmoth bring her fears and anxieties into clearer view.

What’s clear from even this small selection of photographs is that Guilmoth is working with patience and deliberateness, not only because she is using a large format camera (which inherently takes time) but in the way she is allowing for meditative slowness to be a part of her perception of the world. Her pictures feel intensely attentive, like the work of someone who is hyper attuned to the smallest shifts in herself and the world around her. In this way, there is a quiet riskiness and vulnerability to these photographs, one that wants to assert a new way of being for herself, even if that chosen path faces resistance. In the end, it feels like a photographic search for comfort and belonging, where the artist’s personal journey is enriched by the active process of seeing.

Collector’s POV: The works in this show are priced between $2800 and $9600, based on size and process. Guilmoth’s work has little secondary market history at this point, so gallery retail likely remains the best option for those collectors interested in following up.