Dear Erin Hart

In 2009, artist Jessamyn Lovell's wallet was stolen from San Francisco Camerawork, and her identity was subsequently used by a woman named Erin Hart. Rather than pursue the case only through police and courts, Lovell hired a private investigator and spent nearly two years tracking, following, and photographing Hart, compiling a grainy, evidentiary archive that mirrors the surveillance culture used against her. The resulting photographs are stylistically anxious, often blurred and off-kilter, conveying the unsettled tension of both photographer and subject. First shown as an exhibition at SF Camerawork in 2014, the project was published as a book in 2015 with an introduction by Heather Snider and an essay by curator Renny Pritikin. Lovell occupies the roles of victim, investigator, artist, and vigilante simultaneously, using photography as a tool of personal justice.