Au Courant
23255 Woodward Ave.

Ferndale, MI 48220
248-548-3770

Wed – Fri 11am-5pm, Sat 11am-4pm.
Oct 26-Nov 30


Au Courant presents the black and white photography of Donna Terek. Terek is an award-winning photojournalist for the Detroit News as well as a freelancer for magazines including The New York Times Magazine and Newsweek. In this exhibition her considerable skills as a photographer are on display not as a journalist, but as an artist creating her own landscapes and narrative.


The subject matter is the cemeteries of New Orleans. If your only exposure to a cemetery is grave markers surrounded by flowers in a grassy area, this is an entirely different experience. Cities of the Dead or Necropolises are built to resemble cities of the living, with individual mausoleums packed tightly together as houses. Streets divide up the city, complete with street signs so guests can find their destination.





Greenwood Cemetery #1





Terek shoots unique compositions to engage the viewer in the world she is displaying. The horizon line often slopes, keeping viewers a little off balance and adding to the unnerving qualities of the imagery. In black and white, clouds and sky create an atmosphere of somberness that bright blues would be hard pressed to convey. The sky takes on the quality of the marble found in a cemetery. Tomb markers glare bright white in the intense sun, in stark contrast to solid blacks looming in the foregrounds.





If the sight of a city of the dead weren’t surreal enough, the quality of light in her images infuses the city with an added dream-like quality. Soft focus mixes with hard edges in her compositions. Terek’s statement describes, “the manipulation of light my personal challenge.” But in New Orleans she found, “a quality of natural light that I didn’t want to alter.” Unaltered or not, she makes it work to transport not just the image of being there, but the feeling of what it was like to be there as well. She tells us very little about the actual layout of the cemeteries as a journalist might have to. Yet the impression the images make might be a more accurate description.


These elements combine to make hauntingly beautiful imagery. In that haunting regard, there is no sense of the fear of a Dracula movie, only the feeling of memory and respect we place with our ancestors. Throughout history, humans have gone to extensive lengths and exhibited much creativity in putting our deceased at rest. With great care and thought, Terek’s work illuminates an aspect of this that few of us have ever seen.