Historic photos and more fill gallery show

• By ROBIN MILLER
• Arts writer
• Published: Aug 17, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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None of it really makes sense. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking closely or standing as far away as possible.

No. No Monet revelations here. What you see is what you get.

And it takes a lot of guts for Preston Gilchrist to admit this.

Because what exactly do old photographs of nameless Victorian women have to do with those in the Bible? Maybe nothing at all.

Then again, the Bible also has its share of nameless women, someone’s wife, someone’s servant who are known only as, well, someone’s wife, someone’s servant. Or sister. Or cousin.

Or friend.

As are the women in the old photo, images Gilchrist has been collecting for at least two years.

They haunted him, these women. He liked their dress styles, the way the hair was piled atop their heads. And he was perplexed that not one of them smiled.

They were forgotten personalities from a time that’s all but forgotten. But even they at one time had names and, in their own way, made a difference in someone’s life. Sometimes that impact was good, sometimes not so good.

Take Lot’s wife, for instance. Yes, Gilchrist is again referencing the Bible. Well, Lot and his family were instructed to leave Sodom and Gomorrah without looking back. Lot’s wife couldn’t resist looking back, which is when she made her biggest impression in this story.

For it was then that God turned her into a pillar of salt.

“And Lot’s wife is one of my subjects,” Gilchrist.

He refers to a piece in his exhibit Daughters of Eve, which shows through Thursday, Aug. 28, at Baton Rouge Gallery.