Hally Pancer


   The Holy Land Trilogy   (1988-2001)
 
   Biography
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Gathering her loneliness, her sense of abandonment, and her
taste for adventure, Hally Pancer sets out in search of insightful
everyday occurrences. Winding roads, lanes, windows, strangers,
and darkness all summon her, each holding out the promise of
an image. And a pause in the loneliness.

This is plan B. Taking her camera she disconnects from her
immediate surroundings, family and friends. Photography is an
acceptable excuse for her absence. Within herself a bare cold
autumn forest invites her to explore.

In a little French town she discovers that Atget’s remarkable
blind organist has become an advertisement for La Belle Epoque.
She records her disappointment. Properties stand empty and
memorials are being built, while homeless men stand exposed
on indifferent streets. Long ago Hally became a make-believe
traveller, her final destination being an empty bed in an average
hotel and a lost Edward Hopper character sitting in a window.
Between men. She reflects on the intense look of the questioning
teen opposite the serenely folded hands of the practiced adult.

Is it all about pocket money, father, female beauty and male
contentment? She reflects on the mystery of the magic trick of
love. The iconic kiss of Doisneau is seen from afar through the
eyes of the wounded.

Homecoming? The perfect homemade chocolate chip cookies in
the perfect setting. She is still driven to look outside, to wander
one more dark alley, to write one more story. But that lousy
chicken dinner stares back, and stops her in her tracks.

Her images come together in a triptych where the night concierge
asks, “Where am I?”. Seeking to understand, find meaning and
even define herself, Hally is aware that these insights may be one
more part of human self-deception. After all, she saw the man
in the dirty glass cubicle selling subway tickets who is writing a
story, about a man in a glass cubicle selling subway tickets. She
saw the boy lost at the circus hoping for success on an imaginary
tightrope. She is cautiously sceptical. Nonetheless she choses to
tell her story because it is the most vital story for her to tell.

Joel Kantor


These photographs were made from 1980 to 2018,
with digital devices, in stereo chrome, 6 x 6, and
Iphone.