Aidan Lapp has compared sitting in front of him for a portrait to an annual physical. Hold Still, this exhibition’s directive title, extends the metaphor: both portraitist and doctor ask their subjects to remain in position long enough for careful examination (though Lapp admits he only sparingly requests total stillness from a sitter). In the portrait session, as in the exam room, the encounter is diagnostic—a close, sustained looking for changes and details that might otherwise go unnoticed, with the suspicion that they might reveal or clarify something larger. Lapp’s portraits become records of his own community across time; his sitters’ likenesses accumulate year after year, added to their growing file. Since Lapp began making portraits in 2020, each subject has entered his expanding contact book, a log of new proximity and eventual return. Can we consider each first portrait an intake?
