
Jenna Bliss
At first glance, the eleven photographs and five light boxes in Jenna Bliss’s “Late Responder” resemble images from America’s Gilded Age: brand-new skyscrapers towering over stern-faced, vaguely puritanical folk. In Western Union #2 (all works cited, 2020), a figure sits with his head bowed and hands clasped, evoking the pose of a devout parishioner, or perhaps that of a watchmaker hunched over delicate handiwork. On closer inspection, viewers will see that the subject is a gloomy contemporary looking down at his smartphone; the logo of the former telegram service company suffuses softly from