Current Exhibition

My mother rarely let me photograph her except in the last week of her life when she changed her mind. Each day as she approached her death, she became more beautiful. After she passed the nurses were in a rush to cover her body and take her away. I wondered why. It seemed natural I would want to stay with her for a while. My mother was also an artist yet sadly most of her work went unseen. Each time we moved she left paintings behind, and I was too young to realize the pain of this.

I live in a house built in 1940 in the mountains that when we bought no-one else wanted. It was small and cluttered, yet I imagined it empty and knew it would be beautiful. Life is going by quickly and today is already tomorrow. I have lost people close to me and not, in ways unexpected or if expected, naively I did not see coming. I know that I will not live in this house forever. The house will hopefully outlive me. While making these photographs, I had the sense that my mother’s spirit was with me in my house. She became the anchor for the rest of the work.

Artist Bio:

Ruth Lauer Manenti received an MFA from The Yale School of Art in painting and drawing in 1994. In 2012, she was given a large format camera and taught herself how to use it. Gradually she felt she could get closer to what she was striving for in drawing and painting through photography. Her mother was also an artist who left behind a legacy of unknown work. Part of Ruth’s determination as an artist is to reward her mother for her efforts and to create a continuum. In 2024 Ruth graduated from The Hartford School of Art in photography where she received a merit scholarship for her studies. That same year her first photobook I Imagined It Empty received the Star Photobook Dummy Award and was published by RM Editorial. In 2025 she was awarded a grant in photography from The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).