By Conor Risch

Lydia Panas finished her “Mark of Abel” series of portraits in August 2008 after three years of work. Nearly a year later she showed the images to New York gallerist Michael Foley at the Center for Photography at Woodstock’s portfolio review in New York City. During the meeting Foley was impressed not only by Panas’ images, but her ability to articulate her vision and her plans for future work. After follow up conversations, Panas and Foley agreed to work together, and her first solo show opens tonight at Foley Gallery in Chelsea.

Panas had already taken the series of portraits—most of them photographs of groups of family members or friends—to a handful of portfolio reviews since 2006, slowly building momentum for, and awareness of, her work. Though Foley was familiar with her photographs, his meeting with Panas was the first time he “linked up who she was with her work.”

During the portfolio review, Foley reacted to the continuity and consistency in Panas’ images, he recalls, and to the fact that they touched on important themes within portraiture. “I found her work to be about the question of relationships, and how people relate to one another when they’re together.” The psychological tension Panas was able to capture between her subjects, and the ambiguity of their relationships to one another, which “created a bit of a guessing game,” appealed to Foley.

He was also taken with the honesty he saw in the images. “I think that people are so prepared when a camera is focused on them to exert a certain face or look or posture,” Foley says. “I felt like Lydia disassembled and deactivated all those things that people use to prepare themselves. [The images] were very arresting, and I rarely see that in contemporary portraiture.”

Further, Foley felt that Panas’ use of selective depth of field has a purpose and supports the work. “When a photographer has a certain way of shooting and they use it smartly and insightfully, it amplifies the core of what they’re after,” he says.

Personal chemistry was also important to Foley’s decision to sign Panas. Through his 20-minute conversation with her at the review he felt that she was “completely dedicated to the medium and the project she was working on, and it was fleshed out.” Not only was Panas able to speak about the work she was showing, she also told Foley about her next project. “Someone who is solid in their vision but is still exploring their subjects, those are the people I really want to work with, because there’s a lot of room then for spinning ideas together and shaping a body of work,” Foley says.

“She was confident but she also knew that her work was not perfected” he recalls. “That lets me know that she’s someone I can really work with and explore what’s next for her and not someone that just has a series of [finished work] all lined up.”

For more on Lydia Panas' work see our article from the February print issue here.