5.21.12 Marsha Owett “SKINS: East End Of Long Island,” 2011

There’s a moment after the tide has gone out and the beach is left covered with a newly dried and unblemished layer of fragile sand, and seaweed. This thin crust stays perfect only for a short time, until it is broken by footsteps or a fresh tide. Like rolls of flesh, it has contours and spots. Like skin, it looks completely different up close than from afar.

Skin is the thin veneer that covers the unimaginable beneath it. It’s the façade that we show to others. It’s a fragile layer that holds everything together. It gets damaged, and then heals itself, sometimes with scars, sometimes as if it is brand new.

Born in Soviet Moscow to a world-renowned physicist and a notorious dissident mother who collected and exhibited illegal “Unofficial Soviet Art,” Marsha Owett was exposed to the power of art from her birth. Marsha become interested in photography while studying in England, and at the School of Visual Arts in New York. In 2006, she shot her first series of micro-seascape photographs in Shimodo Japan. In 2011, Owett was accepted to exhibit in two group shows: one in DUMBO, NY, and the other at the Los Angeles Center For Digital Art. In fall of 2011, Owett had her first solo photography exhibition at the New York Center For Photography And Moving Image. The show was named Critics’ Pick by New York Magazine. Marsha currently lives in TriBeCa with her music executive husband and their two young children.