Nina Mae Fowler’s work in Intimate Strangers begins with existing imagery. In many cases this is a photograph of a stranger, lent by a friend. She examines the picture, locating its emotive sources, and then reconstructs it as a new work. The result invites us to see the original subject as the artist does, with its entrancing aspects exaggerated and certain details focused on or distorted. The final images possess a wonderful duality, existing not only as powerful works in their own right but also as the custodians of a narrative between subject, lender and artist. Characters’ depictions are altered at each stage of this process, much as they shift and slide in life, embellishing the fragility of passing time. Above all, I find the artist’s work in this series to be a loving act. She takes the personal and private and treats it as iconic, and this content is reflected in her choice of form: intimate snapshots are pulled into larger, more sculptural shapes. The details of the reconstructed images seem to venerate their subject. In the process, it is as if the artist channels the lender’s own emotions for the subject as much as those expressed by the subject themselves. POLLY STENHAM