Sailboats and Swans

There is nothing easy about it. It is a constructed moment, a scene within a scene, the real within the unreal. They are moments, lunga fermata, suspensions of time in the midst of what might otherwise be unbearable. The images are about a kind of discomfort—theirs, hers, mine and ours. It is like an old fashioned staring contest—one guy looks at the other and the first one who blinks is the loser, except Michal Chelbin never blinks. Instead she captures with the click of a shutter. Chelbin is always looking, drawing what is hidden to the surface. She captures—we shudder. — A.M. Homes