The photographs Dale Niles has created for What Lies Within: The Eclectic Collections of Andrea M. Noel, are not only the perfect creative cataloguing of Andrea’s well-developed sensibilities, but Niles’ images take possession of the objects in a new telling through staged tableaux and conceptual portraiture, creating her own reinterpreted collection of a collection.Aline Smithson, visual artist, educator and editor

“To enter Andrea Noel’s house is to step into another (studied, precise, yet entirely whimsical) dimension, one of endless possibility and connection. There is no one like Andrea or the cabinet of wonders that is her house and garden. The impeccable care and curation of matter, and of “moments” in space, that Andrea performs is a special kind of alchemy. To study these wonderful photographs is to open a door to someone else’s (in this case, two people’s) imagination. In What Lies Within, Dale conjures enchantments that mirror Andrea’s own.  

Alexa Dilworth, publishing director and senior editor at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University