Exhibition
This exhibition featured a collection of images by Gretchen Allen which were damaged and remarkably transformed by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
Returning home in the immediate aftermath of the storm, Allen found her worldly treasures submerged in what she described as a “miasma of muck, mud, and mire”. Her life’s work was all but destroyed by nature’s violent wrath, along with mountains of memories. Piece by piece, she tried to salvage her photographic archive — watching as the chemical emulsions of the slides, the colours, and the memories literally washed down the drain. Devastated, she placed the damaged slides in a container and stored them away.
It was years later in 2017 that Allen found the courage to revisit this photographic series. While no longer recognisable, in their deterioration the slides had been transformed into pictures of abstract art.
What she found was both startling and surprising: explosive colours poured forth, as though someone had upended “God’s paint box”. Unexpectedly, there were intriguing abstractions, French impressionistic pieces, and cosmic cloudscapes. These transformed images no longer got their meaning from the story they once told, but rather from the story “painted” by the storm.
The devastating trail of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 serves as a sobering reminder of our own experiences with Ivan and these “Ivanised” photographs symbolise both the damage that nature can inflict, as well as the hope and transformation that emerges out of our darkest moments, such as the rallying of our Caribbean community in support of those affected.
Returning and Travelling Exhibitions
Through Ivan’s Eye
About the Artist
Gretchen Allen
1944–2019
Gretchen Allen, who lived in Cayman for 35 years, was an award-winning multimedia journalist, a radio and television broadcaster, a newspaper reporter and editor, a photographer, the Governor’s Social Secretary, as well as an actress and a jazz singer. Her diverse career included time as a correspondent for the Associated Press and numerous newspapers and magazines, covering an array of topics including food, wine, travel, major sporting events, and celebrity interviews. She served as an editor of United Nations documentation, worked for a renowned shark research laboratory in her hometown of Sarasota, Florida, and taught writing in the artists’ colony of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Her photographs were shown at NGCI in the exhibition Through Ivan’s Eye in 2018 and in Cayman Brac in 2019, along with a recent feature in The Ties that Bind (2022).
