In Seyler's work, the process of mediation is not replaced but made more complex by virtue of being (itself) the subject of a transformation. Mediation is, in this artist's hands, transformed not so much into ritual acts of medication – although there is nothing inherently wrong with this – but into a metaphysical healing process with very down-to-earth implications.

Most of the subjects in the photographs are comprised of people that the artist personally knows, either as friends or relatives. While this 'distance' – or the 'connection' between the artist and her subject – is unmediated by the collective, it does not mitigate against the values invoked in behalf of the universal. On the contrary, the values of Subjectivity and Nature converge in Seyler's work to create a desolate, inconsolable feeling of love, distributed equally over the facts of human existence and the transcendental essence of humanity.

In picture after picture of people she knows, we are struck by her sense of resolved dialectics between the facticity of the subject's expression and the expressive materiality of the photograph's so-called 'transcendental' circumstance. What, then, are we to make of the girl with tea spilled over her unperturbed face? What about the girl with her fingers dramatically stuffed into her mouth and herbs stuck to the surface of her image but who remains nonplussed? And what of the photographs of the older woman bending over and tending to her younger adopted child? The simplicity effects a language of atonement that defies our best hermeneutic acts, especially when they must confront the inherent, poignant mystery of the facts as they surround – literally circumscribe – us with nothing more than themselves.

By Richard Milazzo

seyler@icloud.com | www.mseyler.com