Artistic photographer’s narrative work finds new interest amid pandemic

When artist Michelle Luke created a series of artistic photographs featuring two lovers suffering through the pains of separation, she didn’t know how the emotions in her piece would soon resonate with so many amid a global pandemic.

“Isolated Lovers, 2020, Waiting” is a photo narrative that illustrates the intimacy and tension between a man and woman who have been separated. She is waiting in a wooded park viewed sitting and laying on a bench in relative calm compared to the man who waits in a city apartment with his hands clasped in worry. The couple never appears together in the series of black and white photos.

“When I created Isolated Lovers it came from the idea of when I was seeing someone far away and then eventually it became perfect timing for what’s happening,” she said.

Luke is originally from Whitefish, but has traveled the world creating and learning about art. Her photography has been featured in art galleries internationally and in major U.S. cities. She returned to the Flathead Valley to care for her ailing parents, but is making plans to travel again, though the pandemic has made that more difficult..

Isolated Lovers has been featured at galleries in Los Angeles and Houston, on display in Paris and was recently accepted to be part of an exhibit at the Carcova Museum in Buenos Aires.

Luke seems to have even connected more strongly with her own piece through the pandemic.

“I always work alone in my studio — I’m very internal,” she said. “But then when I couldn’t leave to find social interaction it was really awful.”

When an idea for a sequence of photographs comes to Luke, it does so in bits and pieces. In moments of quiet like just after she has awoken or while riding the train. Then she works to execute by finding models and locations to bring her thoughts to life in photographs.

“The idea won’t go away until I shoot it,” she said.

She takes photos in black and white, she says, as a way remove color from the scene but mainly because it creates poetry to the images. She composes the photographs in a way to show abstract forms and shapes, and as a way to lead the eye in a way that fits with the narrative. Sometimes a person’s whole body and the surrounding landscape are part of the scene, and then the next photograph might be just a closeup shot of the person, such as their hands.

“I want the viewer to slow down and be enveloped by the series of images,” she said. “I want to create beauty and elegance to lift people out of this world and take them to another world.”

Her pieces show a series of moments that often tell a story, but seemingly without an ending to that journey. Keeping space between her images, she says, is important to the visual story.

“It’s like clues to a mystery that don’t lead anywhere,” she says.

Luke found photography while attending the University of Montana earning a bachelor of fine arts. She had been studying sculpture, but after taking a mandatory photography class her professors noticed that’s where her talent lies. Later she also earned her masters at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan.

“Photography chose me,” she says. “I didn’t choose it.”

She remembers announcing to her family at age 6 that some day she was going to Paris, France. She eventually made it there and many other places while creating her art.

“I knew something was coming and I was impatient to be whatever that was,” she said.

When she came home to care for her elderly parents until they passed away, her artistic talent went into creating a backyard rose garden and writing, but still something has been missing.

Now she’s working on putting her ideas into photographs and preparing for when she can travel again and work alongside other artists.

She was recently invited to have a residency in Berlin, Germany, at Künstlerhaus Bethanian in 2021, after their artistic director reviewed her portfolio and decided to write an essay on Isolated Lovers. Luke is seeking a sponsor to participate, noting that most other countries sponsor artists to participate in such an opportunity, but the United States does not.

“I stopped putting beauty out into the world,” she said of her time at home and looking ahead. “For me it’s important to share my work.”

For more information or to view Luke’s work, visit michelleluke.com.