An Excess of Possibility - Paul Roth
Debra Friedman’s Bermudian portraits are both true to life—faithful likenesses of teenagers from this idyllic North Atlantic island, photographed in its parishes and villages—and deeply mysterious evocations of metamorphosis. This duality of effect lies at the emotional heart of her aesthetic, a concurrent exploration of surface and depth. Friedman’s portraits of the young are graceful, placid, and purposeful, reverent of her sitters. But they also convey awkwardness, disquietude, emotional turbulence, and indetermination. In the faces and bearing of her subjects, we see something fleeting but universal: the restless passage between childhood and adulthood, a state of transition from the familiar to the unknown.
Friedman has realized portraiture projects depicting children and teenagers throughout her career. Invited to serve an artist’s residency in Bermuda, she found herself drawn to the area’s young men and women, to their distinctive character and beauty. She sought them out as she bicycled around the island, approaching them as prospective collaborators, describing her project, and inviting their participation.

Boys & Girls Brigate, Saint Paul’s Church Hall, Pembroke Parish, 2015

Berkeley Institute Prefect, Hamilton, Pembroke Parish, 2015

Angle Street, Community Center, Pembroke Parish, 2015

Lean-To, North Shore Road, Hamilton Parish, 2015

Bermuda Youth Rugby Practice, National Stadium, Devonshire Parish, 2015

Exam Day, Cedarbridge Acadamy, Pembroke Parish, 2015

Bermuda Heritage Worship Center, Pembroke Parish, 2015

Border, Dellwood Middle School, Pembroke Parish, 2015

Recruit, Bermuda Regiment, Warwick Parish, 2015

Recruit, Bermuda Regiment, Warwick Camp, 2015

Dellwood Middle School, Hamilton, Pembroke Parish, 2015
English philosopher R.G. Collingwood, in his 1938 treatise The Principles of Art, suggested that portraiture’s function of verisimilitude, the accurate likeness of a sitter, was secondary to a painting’s evocation of inner life, of intimate connection and personal history: “When a portrait is said to be like the sitter, what is meant is that the spectator, when he looks at the portrait, feels as if he were in the sitter’s presence.”
In other words, the portrayal’s function runs deeper than mere transcription, and a portrait succeeds (for lack of a better word) when it describes something significant, something profound, whether universal or specific—familial bonds, class belonging, or an emotional register or mental state that illuminates the experience of the subject. Traces from the past, evidence of the present, hints toward the future: all can, as Bob Dylan wrote in his song Visions of Johanna, “howl in the bones of her face.”

Cornerstone Bible Fellowship, Devonshire Parish, 2015

Bathers, Elbow Beach, Paget Parish, 2016

Couple, Victoria Park, Hamilton, Pembroke Parish, 2015

Mosque Muhammad, Pembroke Parish, 2015

Angle Street, Community Center, Pembroke Parish, 2015

After School, Church Street, Hamilton, Pembroke Parish, 2015
