Carving the Lung, Dru Donovan’s first solo exhibition in Portland, brings together work spanning the last eight years. Much of her work investigates how we take care of ourselves and one another by examining our need for physical contact, how we show and express affection, and how self representation is expressed in posture, gesture and interactions with others.

In Carving the Lung, Donovan explores how people construct and present their identity – specifically teenagers, young adults, and people choosing to alter their bodies through fitness, operation, and presentation. Subjects include a female bodybuilder attempting to control and sculpt her form; a man transforming himself through gastric bypass surgery; adolescents losing bodily control due to over consumption; and a young woman expressing varied individualized identities in multiple pictures adopting the format of a headshot or profile picture. Through the joining of light, form, and context, disparate individuals become unified in Donovan’s black and white photographs. The construction of scenes allows Donovan to locate and investigate the intersection between one reality that exists and another imagined.

Dru Donovan earned her BFA from California College of the Arts and her MFA in Photography at Yale University. She has exhibited extensively, including Desire at Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter at Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, The 2010 California Biennial at The Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, CA, and There’s Something Happening Here, at Brancolini Grimaldi in London. Donovan has also been published in Matte Magazine, Picture Magazine, The Photographer’s Playbook, and Blind Spot. Most recently, Donovan’s new project Positions Taken appears on the cover of VICE Magazine’s photography issue.