One of the many compelling aspects of Debranne Cingari's photograph is that the viewers contemplate how each one came about. Their directness allows one to imagine her "eureka!" moment when she came upon the right bed and breakfast in Pennsylvania, the perfect junkyard in Arizona or when she saw the potential of an expansive loft building in Woodstock.
Cingari lets real life guide her and it is an inexhaustible source of inspiration. But she is also theatrical, turning the ordinary moments into narratives and scenarios that she stars in herself. A main prop is her very serviceable wardrobe. A red dress that she wears in a room with roses on the wall paper and a huge vase of them in front of her sets a romantic atmosphere with a hint of luridness. She is more direct in "Seduced" in which she wears a negligee. Her face is blurred her adding the senses of being swept away. She swathes herself in lace - it betokens innocence. For her "Mourning Series" done in memory of a recently deceased friend she wore and appropriate black dress. In one image from this series she sits in a bathtub with the black skirt flaring around her, emphasizing an immersion in sadness.
A viewer sense the inspiration of Cindy Sherman, the major chameleon-like role player in contemporary photography. Cingari doesn't become other characters as Sherman has done for many years, but she exudes the confidence that she has a persona, composed of both her strong physicality and an attitude of openness that can adapt itself to any situation. There is a sense of anticipation about what guise, what aspect of a woman's character, she will assume next.
But Cingari adds different, strong notes to her melody when she takes her camera- with its essential remote controlled timer - outdoors. In two photographs from the junkyard she insinuates herself in situation that let her exhibit a toughness and grittiness that might be softened in the indoor work. Se sits in the shade in front of weathers house in "Inside Screams". She projects a sense of aloneness, like that possessing the people in "Edward Hoppers" paintings, and the scrams might inhabit the old building but they also come from her.
She makes herself an icon or a universal symbol in outdoor photographs such as the "Weathered" series in which she sets up the old-age identification of woman and the earth. Ironically, though, the Arizona landscape that is the locus of the series doesn't convey fertility. However "The Womb" in which she fits herself into a hole in a cliff perfectly conveys an essential femaleness, but it also has great formal power as an exercise in pleasing roundness. A similar formal strength is found in the "Nantucket" series in which Cingari takes over a lighthouse by occupying the square frame of a window opening.
The serial images of Eadweard Muybridge and Thomas Eakins had investigative value but they also often concentrate on naked bodies. Something of this dual pull resides in Cingari's "The Stools" in which the only moving thing in the 16 panels is the artist's body in dialogue with three stools. The space is illuminated through for insistently regular windows.
Debranne Cingari's art characterized by a sense of integrity because of its wholeness. It is a constant inquiry into the relationship of a person to the world, and at the same time it captures the rich fluctuating experience of that relationship.
William Zimmer
New York City
January 2003
"Debranne Cingari's self-portraits ask questions more than they give answers. There is a longing present in many of these images that makes us want to know more about the artist and about how she sees herself in relation to her own complex world."
Joyce Tenneson 2003