Ron Moultrie Saunders: Beneath My Skin is the History of My Beauty
Curator. San Francsico Arts Commission Galleries. 2019
Beneath My Skin is the History of My Beauty employs storytelling as a gateway into cultural history, personal identity, and family mythology. Saunders layers physical artifacts—rope, cotton, snakeskin, and scale models of railroad tracks—that directly reference his family’s past, while salt and water evoke larger histories of the African Diaspora. These elements operate as symbolic markers, connecting intimate family narratives with broader histories of labor, migration, and survival. By weaving together memory and material, Saunders creates a body of work that reflects both a private mythology and a collective story that extends far beyond his own lineage.
The works in this exhibition are photograms: photographic images created without the use of a camera. Saunders places objects onto light-sensitive, silver-based photographic paper, exposing them to light so that silhouettes and shadows emerge as ghostly impressions. Drawn to this early photographic process, Saunders embraces its ability to reduce forms to pure structure and essence, stripping away distraction to highlight texture, shape, and negative space. In doing so, he transforms humble and historically charged materials into powerful visual narratives, embedding memory and meaning directly into the photographic surface.
About Ron Moultrie Saunders
Ron Moultrie Saunders is a San Francisco-based photographic artist, landscape architect, and teacher. Born in Jamaica, Queens, he moved to San Francisco in 1982 after earning a Master’s in Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. Between 1983 and 2001, Saunders studied photography with Ruth Bernhard, Cole Weston, Mark Citret, and Frank Espada. He pushes the boundaries of traditional photography through cameraless photograms, a 19th-century process in which objects such as water, plants, rope, and the human figure are placed directly on light-sensitive paper and exposed to create shadowy, immediate images that reveal unseen dimensions of life. His projects, including The Secret Life of Plants and Someday We’ll All Be Free, explore the hidden connections between humans, plants, and the natural environment.
Saunders’ work is included in the San Francisco Arts Commission collection, and he is currently completing a commission for the San Francisco Public Library, Bayview Branch. His work has been exhibited widely across the United States, including solo exhibitions such as The Secret Life of Plants at CordenPotts Gallery (San Francisco, 2010) and group exhibitions including Exposed: Today’s Photography/Yesterday’s Technology (San Jose ICA, 2010), Measure of Time (Oakland Museum of California at City Center, 2009), SCAR TISSUE (Common Wealth Gallery, Madison, WI, 2006), and Self-Exposure: The Male Nude Self-Portrait (Clamp Art, New York, 2005).