Marie Cosindas at Adams House

The current photographic exhibit at Adams House breaks an unofficial tradition there--the showing only of work by people connected with the University. The result, however, is well worth the affront to isolationist sentiment.

Miss Cosindas' work is marked by highly studied and formal composition, combined with an acute perception of human character. Unfortunately, it is also slightly marred by what would seem to be carelessness in printing and exposure: almost all of the pictures are too dark, and there is a tendency for details in the background to merge with details of the subject, making distinction of the two next to impossible.

The ideal example of Miss Cosindas' style (and the photo, incidentally, is also a fine print) is her study of a woman seated on the floor in a quite stylized pose suggestive of a dancer, with a man standing nearby looking down at her. Along the diagonal of their heads and quite out of the light, hangs a painting of a wild bacchanalian rape scene. It is only when one's eyes reach this painting that the formality of the photograph begins to dissolve into sham and one notices that the seated woman's companion may not have quite so placid and unexcited an expression on his face as one first thought.

Miss Cosindas is obviously imaginative and sensitive. One hopes that her technique, already satisfactory, will come to do even greater justice to her talents.