About this Book

Rexroth's most notable work, Iowa, is a series of dream-like and poetic images.[3] Each seemingly candid and liquid composition includes a soft focus and vignette, characteristic qualities of Diana camera images.[3] In The Snapshot, author Jonathan Green writes, “The Diana images are often like something you might faintly see in the background of a photograph. Strange fuzzy leaves, masses and forms, simplified doorways. Sometimes I feel as though I could step over the edge of the frame and walk backwards into this unknown region. Then I would keep right on walking.”[10] Speaking to the appearance of Rexroth’s work, Mary Abbe of the Minneapolis Tribune Paper states, "The show's most striking image, "A Woman's Bed" Logon Ohio 1970, is also one of its simplest. "A Woman's Bed" is a shadowy picture of a dark headboard half-buried by a drift of stark, white, primordially pure bedding. The headboard's design and the way the bed edges into a corner suggests the narrow confines of the lives it sheltered [...] a mysterious womb of light wrapped in darkness." The Iowa series subconsciously expresses Rexroth's childhood memories of visiting family in Iowa.[3] Growing up in the suburbs of Arlington, Virginia, she was captivated by the exotic summer landscapes of Iowa.[2] Although the influence of her memories is present, Rexroth refers to Iowa as a hallucinatory state of mind rather than a concrete geographic location of personal sentiment.[3] She describes Iowa as "conceived of as a kind of psychic journey from one emotional mood to the next-- a maturation process. It all happens in a place which is very exotic."[8] In the introduction to the book, Mark L Power describes this work as "Sunny Iowa was transformed by memory into a dark Iowa with 'a real feeling of melancholy.' It became Iowa of 'atmospheres' and the Diana became a key-- with it, Rexroth unlocks Iowa from wherever she happens to be."