Joyce Tennyson at the Griffin Museum

I have always enjoyed looking at Joyce Tennyson's images. Her lighting is graceful, subtle and ethereal. She seems to capture a woman's inner beauty and strength regardless of age. Her book "Wise Women" is full of some very heartwarming and surprising stories shared by women over 65 . The images are honest and powerful. It made me actually look forward to growing old.

The first time I heard Joyce speak was a couple of years ago at the Griffin Museum in Winchester, MA. She was showing, images from her most recent book entitled: "Intimacy- The sensual Essence of Flowers" published by Barnes and Noble in 2004. The flowers in the book are all set against a flat black background and are accompanied by selected bits of poetry from Rilke, Aniis Nin, Emily Dickinson and others. Joyce used a macro lens on a high resolution digital camera and natural lighting to capture images so full of texture and color, they seem to have an inner life. Through creative cropping and layout design, the flowers seem to interact and converse with each other across the pages as if the poems are their own.

All that being said, I was I bit disappointed with seeing Joyce Tennyson this second time around. She seems to have gone through some sort of personal awakening that must be working well for her personal strength but came across to me as outright arrogance.
I entered the talk a bit late and had to sneak to the back the darkened gallery while the history of Joyce Tennyson's work slowly came to life in a lovely display of Joyce's PowerPoint skills. Each section of work was accompanied by its own theme song. I found it distracting and contrived. I personally think that she should let the images stand on their own. Music used to illustrate photographs just becomes a gimmick to force feed emotion and meaning into the images i.e. (Enya= ethereal) or (Bjørk w/drum=powerful.)
Once the snazzy slide show was finished she gave a teary eyed statement about how powerful her images were with the music added to them. She went on to explain how much she learned about the beauty of growing old from these amazing women, giving her the strength to photograph herself nude at the age of 62. (Insert polite applause here.) She was too choked up to continue so she launched the PowerPoint of her flowers and grandchildren pictures form Maine. After the PowerPoint, Joyce opened the floor to questions. I was expecting to hear a bit more about her life and works but, it seemed that she was going under the assumption that we already knew everything and were just there to meet her in person. Each question asked launched a new colorful story about how "grace descended" and the work was made.

What I learned this time:

• Joyce "cannot bear small talk."
• Joyce is the only female artist sponsored by Epson.
  
• Joyce is "very smart about getting what [she] wants."
• Anyone can make a photo book.
• Joyce has NEVER had someone criticize her for shooting or printing digitally. (I think I offended her with the question.)
  
• Joyce is a perfectionist.
• A $700.00 Plexiglas covering for a print is "not very expensive."
• Joyce Tennyson does not change her shots or ideas for any client. And they all know it.
  
• Plexiglas is pretty, shiny, very reflective and incredibly distracting in a gallery setting.
• Stubbornness is really the key to success.

In conclusion: I still love her images, I am just a little less inclined to hear her talk about them.