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# A Photography Display Infused with the Scent of Flowers
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/jay-muhlin-vox-populi-scent-of-flowers/
- Published: 2018-01-11T21:17:27.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:11:11.000Z
- Description: The combination of photography with scent is a curious, if slightly unsettling one.
- Author: Deborah Krieger
- Tags: Art, Review, Vox Populi, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-18 14:37 (2018)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2018/01/img_0754.jpg)

Installation view of Jay Muhlin: Kid at Vox Populi, Philadelphia (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)

PHILADELPHIA — There is [a photography exhibition at Vox Populi](http://voxpopuligallery.org/exhibitions/jay-muhlin/?ref=hyperallergic.com) infused with the scent of flowers and forests. The photographs, by [Jay Muhlin](http://jaymuhlin.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com), chronicle the life of, in the artist’s own words, “[a young girl who he is helping raise](http://voxpopuligallery.org/exhibitions/jay-muhlin/?ref=hyperallergic.com).” The girl in question displays a whole range of childlike behaviors — playing in a garden, in various costumes, mugging for the camera.

The combination of photography with scent is a curious, if slightly unsettling one. Photography is still held to have some measure of honesty, or a documentary nature to the images it captures (or, more accurately, creates); yet smell is less objective, since it conjures up memories and associations in immediate, primal, and affective ways. I wondered, as I looked at these girlhood snapshots — of her grimacing for the camera in plastic vampire teeth, or lying facedown in a bank of snow — whether my perception was being manipulated by that sweet smell, which primes us to feel happy and at peace.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2018/01/img_0759.jpg)

Installation view of Jay Muhlin: Kid at Vox Populi

Muhlin seems to acknowledge and even revel in the unease photography can produce: one of the first photographs on display depicts a cat (a recurring compatriot of the girl) sitting on top of a stack of tomes whose titles — including *The Anxiety of Photography*; *Memories, Dreams, Reflections*; *Documentary Storytelling* — allude to the ambiguity of the rest of the exhibition, titled *Kid*. An adjacent photograph, which depicts this child laying down a line of carrots away from a bush, even reads like an invitation — as in, follow the rabbit hole into this show, and into this heightened, floral-scented reality.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2018/01/img_0761.jpg)

Installation view of Jay Muhlin: Kid at Vox Populi

The key work in *Kid*, however, is not a photograph, but a child-size chair (topped with a copy of the show’s photobook) placed near the center of the space on a pedestal. The associations of putting an object on a pedestal, and their application here, could not be clearer: with this gesture, Muhlin indicates that childhood itself is being venerated and sanctified. He is not documenting childhood, but expressing its value, while lamenting its brevity.

In a striking photograph, the child is posed like a model against a white backdrop, fingers dripping with jeweled rings, wearing an almost solemn and wistful expression, as if she, too, sees her own uncertain, grown-up future. Or perhaps she is looking back on her childhood, each image on the walls a bittersweet memory of what was, punctuated by the scent of flowers.

[Jay Muhlin: Kid](http://voxpopuligallery.org/exhibitions/jay-muhlin/?ref=hyperallergic.com) *continues at Vox Populi (319 N 11th St, Philadelphia) through January 21.*