Michelle Caplan tells this and other ‘Secret Stories’
By Theo Douglas

“NEVER LET GO” by MICHELLE CAPLAN

Many artists make assemblage pieces; the people in hers are what distinguish mixed media/collage artist Michelle Caplan’s new show, “Secret Stories,” now at Open. Caplan uses vintage photos of very striking folks—most of whose true stories are lost in time—to spin her own detailed narratives on canvas.

Old snapshots are fraught with peril—plagued by sunspots, fingers on the lenses, double exposures, or the taker’s own shadow. Caplan spends hours seeking good ones, of people you think you would have liked to have known. They’re attractive and robustly American: slick-haired men, delicate ladies. And there’s always something behind their eyes, even if most of what you see is just a ghostly stare.

“I think that the eyes are definitely very expressive and very much a part of . . . you can read a lot of personality if somebody has soft eyes or kind eyes,” says Caplan, a former design student and book cover designer. “You can definitely get a feeling for the kind of life someone has lived.”

Most of the men and women in her photos look to have lived healthy, outdoor, chicken-every-Sunday sorts of existences—typical American lives. Too bad they’re probably dead now; what’s behind their poses—on the beach with oars, on horseback under date palms, or just sprawled on the lawn—wants to tell us about ourselves.

Because they can’t talk, Caplan speaks for them. She prints her photos large, then invents a backstory for each person—now a character—and varnishes on clippings from her files: pictures of flora and fauna, society columns, pages from vintage women’s self-help books; instructions on fishing and woodsmanship; headlines from what could be the Policeman’s Gazette.

“I give them a name,” Caplan says. “I get a story in my head, and that’s what I want to depict. And I find old postcards, old newspaper clippings, things relating to that.”

And so we have Jimmy, a guy in a derby hat looking sideways out of the frame. He looks crafty; he looks like a Jimmy. Printed large over his mug is the logo from Mechanix Illustrated magazine—the industrial typeface breaking up his pudgy face.

April is possibly the oldest portrait here: a studio black-and-white of a woman’s face silhouetted, it could be from the ’20s. Her hair is baby-fine, and she wears a high-necked blouse. Caplan adds hints of spring: an engraving of a moth and caterpillar, and a drawing of a sego-lily—possibly a frontispiece from a cast-off horticulture text. It’s all very historical.

The Oarsmen, a diptych, features nearly identical blond oarsman-on-a-beach. An old advertisement for birdcalls, and another for fishing flies, lets you into their heads. There’s even the headline from a boating book: “The White River Raft.” Impossible to say how old these guys would be today, but they have the restless energy of a modern surfer.

Photos of the women, like Elaine4, show us how far we’ve come from then to now. She is positively luminous, like a young Elizabeth Taylor circa Father of the Bride. The artifacts added—headlines and writings of the day—tell a different story: “Men Love Women Who Say Yes and Marry Women Who Say No”; “Visual Poise”; “Hunt Club Fetes Eligible Debs.”

Remember when there were debutantes? Remember when there were fetes? Caplan takes us back.

MICHELLE CAPLAN, “SECRET STORIES” OPEN | 2226 E FOURTH ST | LONG BEACH 90814 | 562.499.OPEN | ACCESSOPEN.COM | OPEN TUES-SAT NOON-8PM | SUN NOON-6PM | THROUGH JUNE 24