In Other Rooms (Aperture, 2014), Francine Prose elegantly notes: “In Jo Ann Callis’s black-and-white and color photographs from the 1970’s, she has managed to convey the complexity and the mystery of sex by communicating something of its complications and its mysteriousness.” Her angle, so to speak, is oblique; physical pleasure–and anxiety–is suggested rather than enacted. What we see is either the prelude or the aftermath of an imagined act: an empty bed with pillows scrunched, legs tied together by gauze, or of a solitary sleeper trying to find some comfort. Callis’s photos ask and then artfully refuse to answer the question of why sex-in-the-brain is such a universal condition, why we can’t stop looking or trying to understand an aspect of our bodies and souls so beyond our understanding.
Early Black and White was originally photographed in 1975-76. Twenty-two of these images were reprinted in 2012 and made into a portfolio with the assistance of ROSEGALLERY.