Art in the Crossfire: A Jewish Sect's Claims Lead to U.S-Russia Art Wars

Not since the Cold War, it seems, have strained diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Russia spilled over into the public arena with such ferocity—only this time the war is over art and two collections of religious books.

The art wars were triggered by the private agenda of Chabad, a Jewish sect seeking religious books and manuscripts possessed by Russia. In 2004, Chabad brought suit as the successors to earlier owners of these pieces and claimed to be their rightful owner. Russia instituted an embargo on art loans to U.S. museums after Brooklyn-based Chabad obtained a default judgment in July 2010 from the District Court in Washington, D.C. Russia had walked out on the proceedings, claiming no U.S. court has jurisdiction over it.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art turned up the heat in this standoff another notch when it confirmed on August 11 its decision not to send 35 works by fashion designer Paul Poiret to the Moscow Kremlin Museum for an upcoming exhibition there. The Met’s chief spokesperson, Harold Holzer, said the museum was acting in response to Moscow’s recent cancellation of loans to the Met as part of Russia’s now year-long embargo.

Continue reading my story in The New York Observer, which brings to light Russia's history of fierce nationalism, especially when it comes to what it considers threats to its patrimony, which discussions of the case and the embargo have until now ignored.

Photo of  Kremlin Museum by Alexander Bokovoy.

"Frans Hals" at the Met: Museum Rearranges Furniture, Renews Old Promise

Does the Met’s Hals show -- almost entirely works from its own collection – tell us anything new? 

No.  The Met has pretty much just rearranged the furniture, taking down paintings already on permanent display and rehanging them in a special exhibition gallery.

But a private loan, Hals’ stunning yet small “Portrait of Samuel Ampzing” (above), is one of the best paintings in the exhibition and one that the Met should be begging for, borrowing for long-term display, or stealing.  In 2007 it sold at Sotheby’s London for more than $9 million, a high price for an Old Master.

Show curator Walter Liedtke revealed to this reporter that two miniature Hals portraits on wood (below, of Petrus Scriverius and Anna van der Aar) – which were highlights of the Met’s massive “Age of Rembrandt” exhibit a few years ago – will be on permanent view once the Hals show ends.  They’ll be in a pedestal display case in the Rembrandt-Hals gallery.  (Actually, the Met made the same promise during the Rembrandt show, too.)

 

“Frans Hals in the Metropolitan Museum,” 5^th Avenue at 82^nd Street, through October 11.

Photos: Top, Sotheby's catalogue; others taken at preview.

Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert

Cariou v. Prince Update: Collectors Screwed, Appeal Stalled in Copyright Case That Has Art World on Edge

How do you inform a collector that a work he bought from you for, oh, a million dollars or so is an illicit work, illegally created and now unsaleable?  Well, if you’re the gallery that sold it, you yell for your lawyers.

That’s what Larry Gagosian and his gallery did when they sent letters to the buyers of appropriation artist Richard Prince’s “Canal Zone” paintings, which, the U.S. District Court in Manhattan ruled in March, infringed -- some might say “stole” -- Patrick Cariou’s copyrighted photographs and are therefore not so different from contraband.  

The letters (left) were sent to comply with the Court’s order in that case, but they didn’t exactly tell the collectors they had all but thrown their money away (unless the ruling is overturned on appeal, which could take years).

The letters stated that “in the opinion of the Court” – as though the federal courts are art critics instead of constitutionally delegated authority on the law of the land –  the paintings were “not lawfully made under the Copyright Act of 1976” and they “cannot lawfully be displayed . . .in the public.”

Translation: the paintings are like pirates’ booty, have to be hidden from public view, and, even according to Prince’s own lawyer, most probably can’t be resold.  According to the defendants’ documents, at a minimum 14 works were sold, and four sold for prices ranging from $400,000 to $2.43 million.

As for Prince himself, the Court’s smackdown doesn’t seem to have changed much, though it could cost him a big hunk of money.  As far as his lawyer Josh Schiller of Boies Schiller knows, the decision hasn’t changed his practice of using other people’s images, nor has it caused “any of his works to be pulled” from any shows, the attorney told this reporter.

Indeed, Prince had two well-received exhibitions in Paris this spring and another in Hongkong.  In August, he’ll be showing in the Hamptons.

Paintings Can’t Be Sold

For the “Canal Zone” buyers, though, it’s a different story.  Their paintings can’t be sold, except conceivably on the black market.  Schiller said “any kind of sale would include showing (the work) publicly” and that’s been forbidden by the Court.

Schiller didn’t say the “Canal Zone” paintings were now worthless – he described their worth as “undetermined” – but he did say that the decision had placed an “implied limit on their value.”  He termed the decision’s effect on the collectors “an injustice.”

Larry Gagosian

A lawyer close to the Gagosian organization said that if the collectors were his clients, he would advise them not to put the paintings up for sale.

Copyright law expert David Wolf, who is not involved in the case and is former litigation counsel at Time Inc., said that any third party who knew about the Court decision and tried to sell the work – not just the owners but an auction house, for example -- “would run a pretty severe risk.”

Have any collectors asked for their money back?  Schiller said he didn’t know.

So are Prince’s dealer and co-defendants Larry Gagosians and his Gagosian gallery offering buyers refunds?  When asked, the gallery refused to comment.

Price Revelations

That’s not all the collectors have to worry about, as revealed to this reporter by the parties’ lawyers this week and gleaned from Cariou’s recent motion to dismiss a joint appeal to a higher court by Prince, Gagosian, and the gallery.

The people who shelled out the big bucks -- as recited in the Court’s decision, eight of the works sold for a total of $10.48 million, and seven were exchanged for art with an estimated value between $6 million and $8 million -- now also could be exposed to the disclosure of how much each paid and, perhaps, their names.

Gagosian Gallery, W. 24th St.

Private market sales are usually kept secret – the industry-wide practice is an old carny shell game of keeping everyone in the dark about an artist’s true prices -- and Gagosian has a strict policy of don’t tell. 

But, in what could be some of the most remarkable revelations of art-market dealings in recent history, that could change when a public jury trial is held to determine the damages that photographer Cariou suffered.

Cariou’s lawyer Dan Brooks has been provided with the appropriate receipts for each painting sold, and the parties have stipulated that the prices “shall be admissible in evidence.”  For now, the information is subject to a confidentiality agreement, but Brooks said they would be “fully aired” at the damages trial and “there won’t be any dispute” about the prices the works brought.  At trial, the buyers’ names could also be revealed, said Brooks.

If we get to that trial.

Prince and the Gagosian defendants filed a notice of appeal before the damages trial could get started, and the District Court adjourned the trial pending the outcome of the appeal. So Cariou has moved to dismiss the appeal, arguing that it is improper until damages have been resolved – that’s a motion that will be decided who knows when, though it could be as early as August.

Prince’s Lawyer: Court Should Disregard My Client’s Testimony

Meantime, of course, settlement is always a possibility, though it was also a possibility that was ignored before the District Court dropped a ton of bricks on Prince’s and Gagosian’s heads.

 

If the appeal is permitted before the damages trial, Schiller plans to argue among other things that the District Court in effect should have rejected or at least discounted his own client’s testimony – since Prince proved to be his own worst enemy.  The Court “would have benefited,” said Schiller, from considering “more objective factors,” which Schiller didn’t specify, and evidence of “how the public perceives his work.”

Prince

Prince, in his losing effort, had argued that his use of Cariou's photographs came within the "fair use" exemption of the copyright law, which allows limited borrowing of other people’s copyrighted work for news reporting, satire, and criticism, for instance.

But the District Court held that for "fair use" to apply, the new work must be "transformative" of the original.  Prince's work was not transformative, the Court found, because it did not "in some way comment on, relate to the historical context of, or critically refer back" to Cariou's work.

Under this test, Prince helped sink his own case.  He testified at deposition that he had no interest at all in what Cariou's photographs meant.

Focusing on Prince’s testimony is too “narrow” a view of the law, said Schiller, and it means “an artist has to lawyer up to get his perception across.”

(Well, one might rejoin, only if an artist is sued, and then he has to lawyer up anyway.)

It could be tough to overcome Prince’s testimony.  “Whatever arguments they make, the Court will look at Prince’s testimony,” said copyright expert Wolf.  “Anytime the party gives detailed testimony about what he’s doing it’s important.”

What Happened to the Unsold Paintings

The District Court had given Carriou the power to determine the fate of the unsold “Canal Zone” paintings.  We now know what he decided.

It turns out that within days of the Court’s decision, defendants’ lawyers, “expressing concern that the infringing paintings might be destroyed” -- an option the Court explicitly permitted – asked Cariou to agree to store the works until the case is somehow resolved, according to papers filed by Cariou’s lawyer Brooks. 

Cariou acquiesced, so there’ll be no conflagration, at least for awhile. The unsold paintings are now warehoused somewhere in Long Island City.  

Schiller said he thought Prince was a “target” because he was “rich.” But rich also means he may well be able to afford endless, costly litigation – Boies Schiller reportedly racked up $7 million in fees defending the Andy Warhol Foundation in an authenticity lawsuit, with the fellow on the other side finally dropping his suit because he could no longer afford to litigate, he had said.

I asked Brooks if he was concerned that his client would be litigated to death.  Brooks’ response:  “No.”

Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert

The Whitney's "Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World": A Reputation in Free-Fall

Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) is not exactly a schlockmeister -- though some of his paintings do look like cheap hotel art – but the retrospective that opened last week at the Whitney might just send his reputation into free-fall.  

This retrospective is the first in New York since 1944 and the first in the U.S. since the 60s, so it offers an opportunity to take stock of Feininger, an American who lived for 50 years in Germany, for the first time in a couple of generations. 

He proves to be an artist without consequence.

Feininger was affiliated with avant-garde German Expressionists but inhabited his own small world of amusing illustration.  He adopted a type of Cubism but stripped it of its ambiguities.   He taught at the progressive Bauhaus with artist-rebels like Kandinsky and Klee, while his own paintings became formulaic.

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t some works to be seen here that give real pleasure.

Sometimes his art has a delightful whimsicality.  Brought by his musician parents to Germany when he was 16, Feininger became a successful illustrator and cartoonist -- he even did comic strips from Germany for the Chicago Sunday Tribune (above, of 1906) – before turning to painting in 1907. 

For a few years his oil paintings retain the lightheartedness and exaggeration of caricature – small heads and clownish shoes, rubbery bodies and fanciful streets – and they’re prettied up with bright colors (top, "Street Near Paris," 1909, and above,"Carnival in Arcueil," 1911).  The Whitney, perhaps recognizing that Feininger’s early works are the ones with audience appeal, has given over nearly a third of the exhibit to them.   But artistically significant?  They’re essentially illustrations of unwritten fairy tales.

Choo-choo trains and bobbing boats appear early and later too, in small works on paper.  Among the most charming works in this show are the wooden toy trains and buildings he began making commercially in 1913 – an endeavor cut short by the outbreak of war -- and then continued making on his own.

In the 1910s, Feininger encountered Cubism and began painting the works he is best known for – German architecture and seascapes.  With translucent planes, the light-filled spaces and sky take on some of the solidity of architecture itself, depicted as though seen through a prism ("Pier," 1912, below).

For 40 years he painted these same subjects in this same style.  The earliest of these works, from around 1912 to 1915, have the excitement of discovery, but they quickly decline to emotional emptiness and pictorial boredom. 

With a few exceptions – some street scenes, for example -- Feininger has little to say about modern life, either in subject and emotion or by stylistic metaphor.  In essence he’s a traditionalist.

His early works might use the bright colors of German Expressionism – he exhibited with the avant-garde Die Brucke – but with nothing of their furious experimentation or their exploration of the dark recesses of the psyche. Feininger complacently inhabits the 19^th century of the Brothers Grimm, complete with old-fashioned costumes.

His Cubist-inspired works likewise shun the contemporary – no everyday objects like newspaper and pipe for him. He looks back nostalgically to medieval architecture and the Romantic era's boat at sea.  It’s the old-fashioned Germanic striving toward spirituality but with the emotional punch sucked out ("Galmeroda VIII," above).  

His detachment from the trauma of World War I and its aftermath in Germany is creepy, especially when compared with the war-wounded drawn by George Grosz, the decadence of contemporary life depicted by Christian Schad, and the dark circuses of Max Beckmann.

Feininger continued using cheery colors, and when he attempted serious war themes, he failed.  (He supported Germany against the allies, by the way.)  His picture of an abandoned child with soldiers is flat poster-style decorative.  The prostitute “Woman with Green Eyes” is a knockoff of fellow Die Brucke artist Alexei Jawlensky.

One might think that Feininger’s affiliation with the Bauhaus, which lasted into the 1930s, would open a new chapter.  In 1919 founder and architect Walter Gropius commissioned him to design the cover of the Bauhaus manifesto.  Feininger supplied a woodcut  -- of a medieval cathedral (left).   

And although there are a few paintings in the 1920s and 30s that seem to move toward abstraction and a new compositional rigor, what the Whitney displays is mostly the same old architecture and seascapes, but now in hotel room and greeting card territory like "Mouth of the Rega," below.

Feininger returned to America in 1937, the same year his work was declared degenerate by the Nazis.  Then it’s more seascapes and cityscapes, but of Manhattan now.  They’re darker, and many are night scenes (below).  They’d make good New Yorker covers.

“Lyonel Feininger:  At the Edge of the World,” Whitney Museum of American Art, Madison Avenue at 75^th Street, through October 16

Photos: Top, from Whitney Museum website, Copyright Lyonel Feininger Family and Artists Rights Society; "Kin-Der Kids" and bottom, MoMA website;  "Golmerada VIII," Metropolitan Museum website.  All other photos, Laura Gilbert

Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert

Supreme Court Declines to Hear Two Closely Watched Art Restitution Cases

The Supreme Court today announced that it would not hear two closely watched art restitution cases -- Von Saher v. Norton Simon Museum and Cassirer v. Kingdom of Spain.

Both cases concern foreign affairs.  Von Saher put into focus the U.S. government’s power to make and resolve war, including the power to resolve war claims.  Cassirer considered whether a foreign sovereign is immune from suit.

The Supreme Court had requested the views of the Department of Justice through the Solicitor General, who recommended that the Court not hear the cases and instead let the lower court decisions stand -- a recommendation the Court agreed with.

Who Owns the Art?
 
So what does it mean?

In Von Saher, the plaintiff -- the sole heir of Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, who fled the Netherlands in 1940 -- is seeking two Lucas Cranach paintings (Adam and Eve, shown below hanging in the museum) seized by Reichsmarshall Hermann Goring.  They now hang in the Norton Simon in Pasadena and, with today's Supreme Court action, are likely to remain there.

The briefs submitted to the Supreme Court in Von Saher make one thing clear:  Holocaust restitution cases can be a lot more complicated than good versus evil, contrary to what their generally superficial treatment in the press would have you believe.  For example, it's not clear that Goustrikker was even the lawful owner of the Cranachs -- at any rate, they had been returned by the Dutch government to another claimant in 1961.

The plaintiff in Cassirer* -- whose grandmother was forced to give up the painting in 1939, when she fled Germany -- is seeking a Pissarro in the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid (below).  Cassirer sued not just the museum but Spain as well, which owns the museum.  After today, Cassirer can continue pursuing the Pissarro.

The briefs here indicate the U.S. government's continuing interest in smoothing things over with Spain.  The State Department's interest in resolving the case diplomatically came out awhile ago in a document published by Wikileaks.  Now the Justice Department has apparently extracted a promise from Cassirer to agree to Spain's dismissal from the case.

Von Saher v. Norton Simon

The issue in Von Saher was whether the California statute the plaintiff sued under was preempted by federal law.  The statute, enacted in 2002, created a distinct cause of action, a sort of Holocaust recovery act, that extended the statute of limitations to recover Nazi-confiscated artwork from museums. 

The Norton Simon moved to dismiss on the ground that in enacting the statute California was trying to redress wrongs that occurred during World War II, which intruded on power reserved to the federal government.  The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed: “the power to legislate restitution and reparation claims is one that has been exclusively reserved to the national government by the Constitution.”  

As of today, that decision stands, but the plaintiff’s case hasn’t been thrown out of court entirely, at least not yet.  The Ninth Circuit held that her claim might be timely under state common law to recover personal property, so she’ll have an opportunity to litigate whether she brought suit within three years after she “discovered or reasonably could have discovered her claim to the Cranachs.”

That might be an uphill battle.  Van Saher (left, shown with other restituted art) claimed she only discovered the works in 2000, but they've been hanging in the Norton Simon since the 1970s.  Neither the museum nor the works are exactly obscure.

The Norton Simon has gotten a lot of flak for not just handing the paintings over, so it bears noting that some thorny factual issues remain to be sorted out – such as, fundamentally, was Goudstikker the lawful owner?

The Cranachs and other Goudstikker paintings were recovered by the U.S. armed forces, and in 1946, pursuant to a policy of external restitution, they were returned to the Netherlands as the country of origin in the expectation that the Netherlands would return them to the lawful owner.

As stated in the Solicitor General’s brief, the Netherlands returned the Cranachs to another claimant:

“In 1961, George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff, heir to the Stroganoff family, instituted a restitution proceeding in the Netherlands for the Cranachs and other paintings.  Stroganoff asserted that the paintings had been seized from his family by the Soviet Union and unlawfully auctioned to Goudstikker. In July 1966, the Dutch government transferred the Cranachs and another painting to Stroganoff in settlement of his claim and in exchange for a monetary payment.  Around 1971, Stroganoff sold the Cranachs to the Norton Simon Art Foundation.”

Plaintiff, for her part, asserts that the Cranachs were never part of the Stroganoff family collection and that Goudstikker bought them at auction legally.

Something else to consider -- isn't the judgment of the Dutch government entitled to substantial deference as a matter of international relations?

Cassirer v. Kingdom of Spain

The Cassirer case questioned what kind of claims can be brought under the federal Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which makes foreign governments immune from suit unless the claim comes within a statutory exception to that act.

Cassirer asserted that his claim came within the “expropriation exception.” That exception permits the court to hear a case where “rights in property taken in violation of international law are in issue.”  

Defendants agreed that the Pissarro was taken by the Nazis in violation of international law and therefore “rights in property taken in violation of international law were in issue.” 

But they argued that the claim did not come within the expropriation exception for two reasons.  First, they argued that the FSIA permits jurisdiction only over a foreign state that itself has taken the property in violation of international law, but neither Spain nor the museum had done so. Second, they argued that before bringing suit under the FSIA, Cassirer had to exhaust his judicial remedies in Germany or Spain.  

Analyzing the plain language of the statute, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.

Cassirer can now proceed with his case – maybe. The Ninth Circuit indicated that the district court should consider whether, as a matter of comity between nations, it should require the plaintiff to exhaust his remedies overseas anyway, even though that is not required by the statute. 

And if the case does proceed, it may be without Spain as a defendant.  The Solicitor General informed the Supreme Court in its brief that Cassirer’s counsel “has informed this office” that Cassirer would not oppose a motion to dismiss Spain from the suit.  “The fact that Spain may not ultimately be subject to the District Court’s jurisdiction -- and in any event that other foreign states should not be subject to the jurisdiction of United States courts based on the possession of expropriated property by their agencies and instrumentalities – significantly diminishes the potential impact on foreign relations of the decision below.”

*The plaintiff died during the litigation and his estate has been substituted as plaintiff, but for simplicity I refer to Cassirer rather than his estate.

Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert

Museo del Barrio Layoffs: More Financial Trouble at New York Museums

The financially ailing and rudderless El Museo del Barrio has laid off its press officer along with three others, is cutting vendor expenses, and is putting on fewer shows because of a financial crisis.

It confirmed the moves only today after refusing to respond to this reporter’s telephoning yesterday.

The information was presented by Susan Delvalle,  director of external affairs and development, in a conference call that included Georgina Nichols, interim museum director and director of finance and administration.

Delvalle declined to state which positions had gotten the ax beyond its communications officer, Ines Aslan,  but said that they included both full-time and part-time employees. 

The layoffs, she added, are just one of “many steps” being taken to slash costs, including a reduction in summer programming for adults, lengthening exhibition time – i.e. putting on fewer shows -- and renegotiating or not renewing vendor contracts.

She said that no further layoffs were envisioned.  The total cost reductions are reportedly in excess of $1 million.

El Museo del Barrio, which has a history of financial troubles – its funding was frozen by the city in the 1980s because of fiscal mismanagement -- has been looking for a director for more than a year to replace Julian Zugazagoitia, who announced in March 2010 that he was leaving and then decamped to the Nelson-Atkins later that year.   

Asked whether the belt-tightening would make the search for someone to take the helm any more difficult, Nichols said, “I don’t believe so,” adding that “every” museum looking for a director was facing the same problem.

One might question her confidence after a look at El Museo’s most recent tax filing, which is for its fiscal year 2010.  It shows an endowment of only $1.8 million, which isn’t going to throw off much income to use for operating expenses. 

And of its $8 million in total assets, $4 million represents promised grants and contributions – i.e. receivables, not money in hand.  Compare that to its expenses for fiscal 2010 – they were $8.3 million.

The New York Times just last week favorably reviewed the museum’s most recent show.  El Museo is still talked about for its stunning and remarkable 2005 exhibition of large-format photographs of pioneering Mexican news photographer Agustin Victor Casasola.

Copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert

Met Museum Caves to Hoax Revelations, Modifies Captions -- Slightly

One-half of one cheer for the Met for realizing that it’s egregiously wrong to dishonestly describe what’s hanging on its walls.

An earlier post discussed two deliberate fakes in the Met’s “Thinking Outside the Box” exhibit.

One was identified as an “oil on canvas” painting by Jean Marc Nattier (left) -- in which a girl holds a box -- and the other as an “engraving.”  But they’re fakes.  Loosely speaking, they’re photo reproductions.

On Monday, a Met spokeswoman stated that the labels would be changed.  A policy of honesty is better late than never.  Now the new labels are up, and each states, in parentheses and in type no larger than the descriptions of the missing originals, that each of the works is a reproduction (below, click to enlarge).

The original works, which are owned by the Met, were part of the exhibit when it opened, the Met says.  The painting was shipped off to the Getty for a show that opened there in April — even though, it should be noted, it was prominently featured, and still is, in the introductory wall text to the Met’s own show.

The engraving was taken down to minimize its exposure to light, the Met explained, and that is a longstanding policy I know about designed to protect certain artworks – though the removed works are typically replaced by other, substitute, originals.

So far, so good.  At least there are reasons these specific originals are no longer on display, though dispatching the painting flies in the face of common sense, since it was apparently thought to be an organizing work in the original exhibition.

So why weren’t both replaced with other originals from the Met’s collection?

On a few days when we both were there, a colleague who is an investigative reporter with decades of experience talked to some visitors who had stopped to look at the “Nattier.”  They told him they thought it was a painting, and while we were there, several visitors photographed the reproduction in the mistaken belief that it was the real thing.

With the fake engraving, it’s probably even more difficult for the casual visitor to distinguish the reproduction.

Why the museum is deliberately showing fakes in its galleries – this show is not the only one now running with misrepresented reproductions or undisclosed recreations, a historic change in policy — is a question the Met refuses to answer.

The “goal” of displaying the reproductions in “Thinking Outside the Box,” Met vice president Elyse Topalian told me, was to give these works a “presence” in the show.  Huh?

She would neither explain her comment nor further discuss its implications for the institution’s integrity or exhibition policy.  But carried to its logical conclusion, this type of thinking means there’s no need to persuade Russia to resume lending art to U.S. museums – it’s quite alright if works from the Hermitage have a “presence” here through reproductions.

For hypothetical consideration, shown here are a few paintings depicting boxes currently hanging in the permanent collection --  Sebastian Stoskopff's  "Still Life" (above), Gabriel Metsu's "Musical Party" (left; note the trunk at the bottom left corner), and Gaspare Traversi's "Teasing a Sleeping Girl" (bottom).  And with more than 1.5 million prints and drawings in the Met’s collection, the engraving now present as a reproduction can’t be the only appropriate work on paper for this show.

As for the slight changes the Met did make, the new labels don’t disclose that the “reproduction” of the painting is smaller than the actual work or that the proportions of the actual print are different from what’s reproduced.

One might wish the Nattier label didn’t still describe the textures represented – “luxury fabrics,” “crystal ewer,” “ormolu-mounted tortoiseshell caskets” – as “all painted with great care” when there’s no paint to look at.

It’s a new era at the Met, it would seem.

Text and photos copyright 2011 Laura Gilbert