In 1988 a young technician at a neighborhood photo lab in Muncie, Indiana, threatened to report Pamela De Marris to the FBI. For months the guy had processed De Marris’s haunting images of her children wearing masks and wrapped in cellophane as they floated in the backyard pool. De Marris says the technician told her, “I can no longer do these, seeing what you’re doing to these children.”
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It wasn’t the first time De Marris had come under attack for the pictures, part of a series called “Undercurrents.” She acknowledges the works were “troubling for a lot of people. They thought I was drowning my kids.” De Marris exhibited the photos in New York, Paris, and Chicago. She says French critics loved the show, and when the Cultural Center displayed “Undercurrents” in 1986 Abigail Foerstner wrote a positive review in the Chicago Tribune, describing the theatrical water scenes as “humorous, sinister and spiritual, sometimes all at once.” But when the photos were shown in Fort Wayne, public outcry led to the removal of several images. “I just let it go and didn’t protest,” De Marris says. It was a case of bad timing: the exhibit coincided with several child abductions in the Fort Wayne area.
She found another outlet in ventriloquism, using a Charlie McCarthy doll. “Charlie would say what I wouldn’t say.”
Unlike previous summers, De Marris won’t be using her underwater camera in the backyard pool. Instead, she’ll cart her gear to France for a three-month fellowship in Giverny, at Claude Monet’s gardens.
