Heather Protz: Destination

Heather Protz, Destination at Savidan Gallery, Las Vegas  

By D.K. Sole

This exhibition tells us two things about Heather Protz. One, she is prolific. The walls are full. There are colour photos, black and white photos, framed, unframed, held up by clips, held up by rods, held up by nails, behind glass, naked to the elements, printed in tiny zines, and spread out in photobooks. We were told that if we wanted to buy one right now we could take it away with us tonight. Normally the gallery wouldn’t do that (they explained) but there were so many waiting to be shown that whatever we took would be replaced with something equally good.  When the photographer tells us in the exhibition text that “I shoot every day wherever I may be,” she is giving us the truth. She will photograph amazing numbers of intentional, exhibition-worthy images even if there is not space to hold them. Behind the mass we see, there is another mass. This show could be another show.

Two, she evades people, or people evade her, or maybe her notion of the ideal place you want to go - the “destination” of the title - is a scene with no one in it. Here she is photographing the streets of Las Vegas: doorways, chain link fences, faded notes in windows, cars rusting in scraps of weeds, a casino sign, a security camera, all messages to let us know that humans have created a place for themselves here in the world, they have shaped it and they live in it, they find the meanings of their lives there, they talk to one another through these written signs that tell us we can “Park in Rear” or that we should consider purchasing aussieBum swimwear for men, or (in one beautifully composed black and white image of bricks and a door) that we can find the handle we want at the end of a white arrow, but in all this mass of photographs we almost never see them. The prime exception, an image of three men whose appearances are characterized by the same wear and age she finds in so many of her locations, is good enough to suggest this is a conscious choice. “To collect photographs is to collect the world,” wrote Sontag, but Destination reminds us, through the concentrated and repetitious absence of people, that the world is not collected. There is a piece missing: the motivators, the friends, the gods, the angels. And they are not necessary.

Heather Protz, Destination at Savidan Gallery, 2nd floor, 1310 South 3rd St., Las Vegas, NV, 89104
November 20, 2021 – January 2022

Published by Wendy Kveck on December 1, 2021