The Poetic Visual Language Of Jordie Oetken

Hailing from Louisville, Kentucky, photographer Jordie Oetken incorporates her background in painting and sculpture into her evocative photographic vocabulary.

From still lifes and landscapes to abstract compositions and crops of graceful intertwined limbs, the forms represented in Oetken’s works take on a sculptural nature. Fluid and dynamic, her works explore the tension between opposing forces, desires and directions. “The photographic frame plays an essential role in this body of work, intentionally using its containment to heighten each happening,” the photographer explains. “Female limbs cross in and out of the image; hands graze the edge, though each figure’s face always remains just out of view— affording closeness while maintaining distance.” Oetken will obtain an MFA in photography from UCLA in 2017.