©Alexa Frangos, (Re)arranging no. 1

“She is still young, but has a crystal clear grasp of what is wrong with the world,” Frangos writes. “I often imagine her hands picking up the pieces of this shattered world and remaking it, leaving nothing undone in her efforts to right all the wrongs.”

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Alexa Frangos for over ten years after meeting her in a critique class at a local Chicago art center. I’m continually intrigued by her thought-provoking and evocative work. Her practice early on stretched beyond conventional photography into the realm of photo-collage, where she conjures surrealistic imagery by hand. She has tackled topics as widespread and meaningful as honoring the legacy of her immigrant and refugee family history in Ghosts Of Displacement to eulogizing the dying art of celluloid cinema in Zoetrope.

Frangos now turns her attention to the workings of her daughter’s hands in a hopeful and poetic collection entitled (Re)arranging. Playful and performative, the work looks both back to Surrealist photography of the 1920s and 1930s and forward to the potential of today’s younger generations to create a more beautiful world. (Re)arranging is currently on exhibition at Perspective Gallery in Evanston, IL through November 1st. Frangos will give an on-line Artist talk Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026, 7 p.m. CT. You can follow this link to register for the talk at Perspective Gallery.

An interview with the artist follows.

©Alexa Frangos, (Re)arranging no. 2

Alexa Frangos (b. 1973) is a photo-based artist from Chicago, Illinois. Utilizing cut paper, photographic ephemera and found objects, Frangos creates constructed realities that seek to reflect on psychological states and identity. She is especially drawn to the collage process as a source of play, performance, and transformation.
Frangos studied Visual Communications and Photography at Washington University in St. Louis before receiving her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where her multimedia work evolved into a photographic practice. She then attended law school and practiced law for many years before returning to art full-time. She has been showing work nationally and internationally since 2012. In 2021 she won a Julia Margaret Cameron award for her series Ghosts of Displacement. In 2024 she was one of Photolucida’s Top 200. Her work has been featured in F-Stop Magazine, Contemporary Collage Magazine, Photo Trouvée Magazine, The Hand Magazine, Newcity Art and Lenscratch.

Instagram: @alexafrangos

©Alexa Frangos, (Re)arranging no. 3

“Every human being is an artist, a freedom being, called to participate in transforming and reshaping the conditions, thinking and structures that shape and inform our lives.”
― Joseph Beuys

I love to catch a glimpse of my daughter’s hands while she is expressing herself. She is still young, but has a crystal clear grasp of what is wrong with the world. I often imagine her hands picking up the pieces of this shattered world and remaking it, leaving nothing undone in her efforts to right all the wrongs.

Inspired by these imaginings, I’ve gathered and disrupted found images, adding my daughter’s hands to perform a sort of excavation, finding and rearranging what is broken and building something new. It is a hopeful process. These images live as an ode to her hands, and all that they will accomplish in creating a better world. – Alexa Frangos

©Alexa Frangos, (Re)arranging no. 4

Your work stretches the boundaries of the photographic medium. How did collage become a central focus in your work? What is it that the collage process allows you to express that you couldn’t with a straight photograph?

From the time I took my first darkroom class in college I’ve had the impulse to alter my images, whether it was scratching into the negatives or cutting up the images after printing. Partly it was a desire to be naughty and to go against the rules; there is nothing more shocking to photographers than scratching or cutting into a print or image. More importantly, it afforded me a direct way to get to the subconscious meaning of an image, to alter it according to my inner reality. Over time, collage became my primary way of making sense of the world and my place in it.

©Alexa Frangos, (Re)arranging no. 5

The images in (Re)arranging are reminiscent of photomontage artists of the Dada movement in the 1920’s. What were your influences in making this work?

When I was a teen, I discovered Dada, Surrealism and Russian Constructivism and my world cracked open. The multifaceted reality of the imagery deeply resonated with me. I come from a background in graphic design, and artists like Hannah Höch and Varvara Stepanova broke apart my staid ideas of design.

Especially for this series, I was nourished by the photomontages of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. The way their photomontages were almost an extension of a theatrical space, and the way the freedom of these images seemed to contain both the past they were living in and the future. Their images were a personal exploration of their own relationship but contained so much more.

©Alexa Frangos, (Re)arranging no. 6

In this collection you work with both found photographs and your own. Is it important to you to use your own photographs? How do you decide when to incorporate other source materials?

The way this series started was the simple impulse I had to photograph my daughter’s hands. Her hands are beautifully delicate, and yet so strong with purpose. So, I started interrupting her life to photograph her hands, much to her bemusement! It was during this period that I came upon an old book on flower arranging at a thrift store. I was immediately struck with the idea of adding her hands to the floral arrangements in the book, as if she was the author of their beauty. The work grew from there to include other found floral imagery and real flowers too.

I do like to include my own photographs in my collage work. I remember something Patti Smith wrote about in her book Just Kids, how Robert Mapplethorpe felt his collages were more honest when they incorporated his own photographs. That idea has stuck with me. 

©Alexa Frangos, (Re)arranging no. 8

Do you start out with a vision in mind for a specific composition or do your pieces arise organically from experimentation and intuition?  

My process is very intuitive. Typically, I start by collecting images that feel connected to me, so for this project it started with the photographs of my daughter’s hands and images from the book on flower arranging. After I have a large pile of images, I start cutting and assembling intuitively – piecing the images together, sometimes with tape, sometimes adding freshly cut flowers. This is my favorite part of the process, and it is very playful. Often the constructions felt like failures, but sometimes I saw an image emerging. Then the photographing begins.

©Alexa Frangos, (Re)arranging no. 9

These images are playful and beautiful, and at the same time they are arresting because the arms in the frame are disembodied. Was this duality intentional?

So much about these images arose from the dark times we are living in. Making them was a bit like combating this darkness with the faith I have in my daughter and her generation to build a better world. So many of our systems have exploded, for better and for worse, and watching her generation respond with such compassion and righteousness is the light in this darkness. So yes, I think the duality is intentional.

©Alexa Frangos, (Re)arranging no.10

You have a recent body of work, Ghosts of Displacement, which speaks to your family’s history as refugees and immigrants to the United States and now in this series you are focused on your daughter. Could you speak to the importance of family represented in your work and what making images that span generations means to you?

My work has always been deeply personal. Ghosts of Displacement was about exploring my own identity as the child and grandchild of immigrants. After spending so much time on a project about my family history, I suppose it was a natural impulse to pivot to the future of my family. Although I didn’t realize that was what I was doing at the time.

©Alexa Frangos, (Re)arranging no. 12

Poet Mary Oliver wrote, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” Has making these images changed anything in the relationship between you and your daughter? What does she think about the work?

This work is so much about the love and pride I feel toward my daughter and working on it has been a way to meditate on these feelings. So, it has only strengthened my love and understanding of her. She is an introvert and being the subject of these photographs is a bit embarrassing to her. As an introvert myself I understand.

©Alexa Frangos, (Re)arranging no. 13

This series has a meta feel, in that you are using your hands to make a series about hands. Do these images in some way represent your own desire to better the world?

I never thought of that! Hands have always been a favorite subject of mine because of everything that springs from them. The only way I can seem to make work is by manipulating and cutting images with my hands, and within the images I create the world I want to reflect. So even though it didn’t occur to me, I think you are right!

©Alexa Frangos, (Re)arranging no. 14

What other projects are on your horizon? Is there anything else you would like us to know about your practice?

I am currently working on a darkroom series that involves cutting and piecing together found negatives before printing them in the darkroom. It is about my background in ballet and the impact it had on me. So, I am still following my impulse to use image destruction as a form of creation. You can see more of the work included in this exhibition on the Perspective Gallery website. You can contact me on my website alexafrangos.com or find me on instagram @alexafrangos.

Susan Isaacson is a photographic artist exploring themes of time, memory, and the emotional topography of life transitions. She is drawn to the natural landscape as a means to connect with and represent her inner world. Her work is influenced by studies of mindfulness and Judaism, with its emphasis on the sanctification of time.

Following a twenty-year career in strategic marketing at a Fortune 100 company, Isaacson established a dedicated photography practice in Chicago, Illinois and Laguna Beach, California. Her work has been included in group exhibitions across the U.S. and internationally.
Isaacson is represented by Alta Vista Arts and Perspective Gallery in Evanston IL, where she has mounted four solo exhibitions and co-curated three member exhibitions. Isaacson was recognized as a Critical Mass Top 200 Finalist in 2023 for her series, We Share The Same Breath and again in 2024 for her project, At Silver Lake. Isaacson’s work has been featured in Black + White Photography (UK), SHOTS Magazine, Photo Trouvee Magazine, LENSCRATCH, NewCity Art and All About A Photo. Her work is held in private collections within the United States.

Instagram: @sbisaacson