GHOST PORTRAITS 2013 - 2014
Her appreciation of nature's essentials runs deep and is felt on her farm in Kutztown, PA. After decades of growth, the family
home now sets amongst a canopy of woodland. It has served as a splendid backdrop for so many of her photographs.
The early experience she had, reinvigorating the countryside with her father, echoes many thematic connections
that she explores within the frame of her lens today. Marc Londo, SixOneZeroMag
These photos need to be seen en masse for their full dramatic effect; their unified treatment
of subject matter and skilled photographic technique. As pensive portraits of the past, she speaks to
the sense of the forlorn in each of us that harbors something deep, intense and strangely beautiful.
Ron Schira, Reading Eagle
https://www.readingeagle.com/2015/06/07/art-review-lydia-panas-ghosts-that-linger-memories-that-endure-at-albright-college/
In 1968, my father purchased an old dairy farm in rural Pennsylvania. Raised on a farm himself, and a survivor of two European wars, land seemed a safe and hopeful investment. My husband and I acquired the farm years later, to raise our family, in a move from New York City. On weekends, my father helped us restore the property. For ten years, every fall, we planted hundreds of seedlings. Pine, scotch, spruce, maple, ash, sycamore, and oak. Beech, magnolia, redbud, dogwood, crabapple. Flowering cherry. Elm, poplar, chestnut, walnut. An heirloom apple orchard. In the bare fields, I imagined the future, as my babies became teens and the trees matured. My father did not live to see them grow. Illness took him without our permission. This project is about ghosts that linger and memories that endure.
All photographs in this series are available as 32 x 48" or 20 x 24" limited edition prints.
This series is available as a traveling exhibition.