The first lyric heard on May’s Featured Artist playlist speaks of knowing and loving someone in tandem, one leading effortlessly into the other. This sweet verse (sung by a chorus of kids from Langley in the 1970s—nostalgic!) and its lovely sentiment could very easily be applied to the work of photographer Birthe Piontek. To know her photographs is to love them.

As we round the corner of spring and head closer toward the launch of our Nostalgia issue, Piontek feels like the perfect Featured Artist fit; her images embrace the past warmly and with great feeling. Yet, there is strangeness here. Piontek’s photographs are sentimental, yes, but they also contain a spark of absurdity. To me, her images are like memories warped slightly by the passing of time, made uncanny in the mind’s eye. Much like Piontek’s work, the songs on this mix ring of the past and its bittersweet, wonderful, illogical tendency to distort our view. Listen, if you’d like.

Love,
Sarah B.