Bodies in proximity, hands engaged in work or in an embrace. Physical actions and relationships populate Contis’s series Deep Springs. The series takes its name from its setting: a historically all-male liberal arts college situated inthe remote high desert of California. Contis’s subjects are pictured in their early college years, a time of coming into one’s adult self. As the artist has pointed out, the West has “always been thought of as a place where one can try on new identities, reinvent or discover oneself. And photography has always been used as a tool to construct new ideas about place and self, especially in the west.”
Gallery label from Being: New Photography, 2018
