Fresh, beautiful and eight months pregnant, photographer Anna Ottum (born 1987) greets me in the sun-drenched house in Baldwin Park that she shares with her husband, a photographer. Parker StewartWe are both impressed by the lineage of her soon-to-be-born son—She, the mother, is a documentary photographer and Stewart, the father, is a landscape photographer.—just like her parents back then she was born.

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Parker Stewart

A recent portrait of the pregnant Ottum, taken by her husband

Ottum’s parents met in the University of Oregon’s photography program and pursued careers focused on photography: “My dad went into the nonprofit arts industry and my mom ended up working for the NEA.” Her childhood was rich in artistic inspiration and freedom. “I really wanted to be a painter. My dad sent my sister and me to an art program twice a week with Margarita Leon—the coolest of the cool art teachers in Portland at the time—and she let us come and try different mediums.” But Ottum became increasingly frustrated with her inability to create what she envisioned, so she gravitated toward photography and began following “this nostalgic thread of documenting my youth and my friends.”

Interestingly, it is this work that has almost subliminally inspired her upcoming show, “Dress Rehearsal,” which opens this Saturday, August 17, at the nonprofit art gallery Cleo, the Project Space on Montgomery Street. More on that in a moment…

In her pre-Instagram and TikTok teen years, Ottum sometimes photographed herself (“we passed the camera around a bit”), but mostly she took pictures of friends who were artists and musicians. “When you’re young, you just find everything you do fascinating.” Using her parents’ cameras and her school’s darkroom, she continued to take these images in college when her friends started touring with their bands. Her portfolio for art school admissions documented a tour of Alaska, a mix of “mind-blowing” and breathtaking landscapes and portraits.

After earning a BFA in interdisciplinary visual arts from the University of Oregon, it was her Alaskan images and depictions of her youth in the Northwest that brought her early recognition in New York City. When she moved there, she had hoped to be a photo editor or a photographer’s studio assistant, but the freshness and contemporary vitality of her personal work appealed to the early 2010s retail market, and she landed a prestigious contract with Urban Outfitters—think images of beautiful girls on the beach, hiking through the woods, or playing guitar. Ottum attributes her early success to the perfect combination of timing and contacts: Her artist friends knew her work and recommended it to their bosses and art directors, while at the same time she immersed herself in the portfolios of many “great” contemporary photographers in her role as creative manager for boutique licensing agency Trunk Archive. Today, published in the New York Times, Interview Magazineand has appeared in advertising campaigns for Nike, Macy’s and Neiman Marcus, to name a few, she admits that she was “very lucky” at first.

Throughout her successful commercial career, Ottum has enjoyed a great deal of artistic autonomy and control, always making time for personal work. She has documented cheerleaders, the Low Country, truck drivers, nail technicians, polar explorers, pop stars and bull riders with distinct intimacy. Savannah audiences may be most familiar with her work, which focuses on the subcultures of rodeos across the country; Arts Southeasts Arts and Culture IMPACT Magazine featured images of gay rodeo culture in their latest issue. Ottum gave up her New York studio during the pandemic and has since made Savannah her home. Most recently, she has turned her attention to the aspirations of young dancers in our community.

Project Space’s brilliant curator, Jeannette McCune, says of the exhibition Dress Rehearsal that “the dueling melodrama of confident posturing and insecurity is contextualized in every aspect of life. These moments include dressing up with hair and makeup, which signal a certain desire for maturity, but also playing with identity on the threshold between adolescence and adulthood. The girls’ movements and postures on and off the stage reveal a discovery of confidence and fragility.” McCune encouraged Ottum to create new work—all 30 images in the exhibition were shot in the last three months—while the nonprofit gallery’s fee gave the artist the freedom to create without worrying about “what will sell.”

As a mother who once drove 60 miles down Interstate 95 with my 12-year-old daughter to return a skimpy bikini she’d bought without my permission, I’ll admit that some of the images initially upset me. Ottum agrees that the discomfort is part of the dynamic of this work. She recalls the images she took of herself and her friends as young girls. “I think I was trying to process my feelings at that age by looking at photos that I didn’t think were ‘sexy’ at all at the time. So these girls don’t really know what that means, even if they think they’re ‘sexy.'” She continues, “I have these intense memories of my dad (because my mom died when I was young) saying, ‘You can’t wear that out of the house,’ or ‘Those heels are too high.’ That was so confusing to me. Because I thought the shoes were cool, and those were the pants that everyone was wearing. I just felt young and fun.”

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Ottum met with the children and their mothers in their own homes and wanted the girls to “show me their world. The mood is playful. They get to dress up, put on makeup and dance around. It’s a subject for the camera.” Her pictures show the youngsters rehearsing and performing for her, as well as dress rehearsals for their stage performances. “It’s about the classic feeling of ‘being a woman means performing,’ but they’re so young that at this point it’s just playful.” The four-year-old doesn’t put on makeup because she thinks it makes her more beautiful, but because it’s just fun to paint her own face.

It’s this discomfort of worldliness and innocence that makes the show so unsettling and so powerful. Ottum is authentic and thoughtful, and has curated her work with the goal of not being exploitative. She says, “I did my best to explain to the mothers that I also wanted to be protective of the girls. I would never use an image that would embarrass them or make them uncomfortable.” Her show’s publicity image, of 17-year-old Aubrey lying in the grass, “is such an innocent moment” and reminded her especially of photos of her own teenage friends lounging in the sun. “I don’t want her to ever seem more mature than she really is, or to make her feel too vulnerable.”

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Another quote from McCune: “Youth, a recurring theme in Ottum’s work, embodies an unwavering clinging to dreams and blind desire, a transience she celebrates through nostalgia. It is a forward-looking nostalgia that one experiences in fragrant grasses and sunlit portraits. These carefree moments of flexible discovery are paired with dancing and the discipline required for such acts. Through the gaze of both groups of images, the viewer is invited to reflect on their own dualities, both past and present.”

The opening celebration for Anna Ottum’s “Dress Rehearsal” will be held on Saturday, August 17th from 6-9pm at Cleo, the Project Space, 915B Montgomery St. The exhibition runs through September 28th and the gallery is open Wednesday through Saturday from 1-6pm. Follow Ottum on Instagram @annaottum and learn more at www.annaottum.com. Follow Cleo the Project Space, a nonprofit arts organization that highlights underrepresented artists and provides them with financial support in their work. @cleo_the_project_space and at www.cleotheprojectspace.org.