Into The Complete Unknown Exhibit
Book Signing and Artist Talk: Tuesday, November 18, 6 pm in the gallery. Moderated by Ann Jastrab, Executive Director of the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, CA.
Opening Reception: Friday, November 7, 5 – 8 pm
Exhibit Dates: November 7 – December 6, 2025
Curated by: Melissa Castro Keesor & Katherine Akey
Into the Complete Unknown
To step Into the Complete Unknown is to cross the threshold of what was—home, body, love—and enter the tremulous space of what remains. In this exhibition, five artists trace the contours of transformation: how loss, aging, memory, and desire carve new topographies of self. Their images do not simply document; they inhabit the in-between where absence becomes presence, and grief becomes a form of devotion.
Annette LeMay Burke’s Memory Building folds time upon itself, projecting family photographs onto the walls of her childhood home. Her layered compositions shimmer between eras, as if the house itself exhales the breath of those it once held. Jacque Rupp’s The Red Purse moves through widowhood toward reclamation, where guilt and vitality coexist, and femininity becomes both armor and an offering. In Time As We Know It, Marna Clarke turns the camera inward, charting the quiet dignity of aging—the body as a witness, a site of history, as an ever-evolving terrain.
Charlotta María Hauksdóttir’s photographs bridge the intimate and the vast, where domestic interiors meet Iceland’s shifting landscapes. Across Outlook and Lookout, she reveals how the world outside—whether embroiled in economic upheaval or global migration—inevitably presses against the fragile safety of home. And in In Gratitude, Rohina Hoffman gathers her family around the rituals of nourishment, celebrating the tender economy of sustenance, love, and continuity.
Together, these works speak in the language of thresholds—of standing at the edge of what has been lost and what might still be found. They remind us that the unknown is not a void, but a space of becoming: where the ordinary acts of living become sacred gestures of survival and grace.
Location: Harvey Milk Photo Center, 50 Scott St. SF
Artists:
Annette LeMay Burke @atelierlemay
Marna Clarke @marnaclarke
Charlotta Maria Hauksdóttir @charlottamh
Rohina Hoffman @rohinaphoto
Jacque Rupp @jacquerupp
Into the Complete Unknown presents five women artists whose photography emerges from life-altering experiences of loss, upheaval, and resilience. Their work confronts moments of rupture-some documenting transitions as they unfold, others reflecting with the distance of time, tracing the emotional and psychological aftermath they leave behind.
Together, these images reveal strength and dignity in uncertainty, showing that wisdom is not found in resolution, but in the ongoing act of moving through the unknown.