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WITHIN SIGHT:
James M. Hunt Gallery Look, See, Glimpse, Spot, Notice, Spy, Gaze, Behold, View, Survey, Stare, Observe, Discern, Examine, Scrutinize, Regard, Contemplate.... Science and philosophy recognize five human senses, but Sight is foremost. That is the sum total of it. (I intentionally avoid saying 'whole.') Unlike mere biology, however, human experience and response -- aesthetics -- engages in a wide spectrum of variation and nuance. Here, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The scientist will note photography as emulsions on film; the philosopher will treat the images per se. The connoisseur of art will experience far much more "Within Sight." "Within Sight: 72 Photographs by 12 Jane Addams Center Photographers" is on exhibition at the James M. Hunt Gallery, Chicago, until December 10, 2000. "Within Sight" ranges in subject matter from solitary leaf to a panoramic vista of the Grand Canyon. Some works are contemplative, introspective, while others reveal visual wit and humor. There are documentary pieces, formalist work which centers upon shape and lighting in composition, human interest. In this showing, twelve of the pieces are self-portraits by the photographers. Always prominent in photographic work at the Jane Addams Center is the high degree of technical proficiency. Since 1970, when James M. Hunt founded the Photography Program, now directed by co-founder, Richard Stromberg, fine technique and a dedication to established genres have united professionals, volunteers, and many from broad constituencies who have come to learn. The results are evident: "Within Sight." The Photography Program does build upon legacies. FourWindsWoman by Vicky James recalls The Thread Maker by W. Eugene Smith, which appeared among scenes from a Spanish village in Life magazine (April 9, 1951). James's photograph exemplifies an important aspect of "Within Sight": It is a classic pose, yet its specific interpretation offers an individuality greater than 'the sum of its parts,' or its genre. James, like Smith, captures a woman at work, and both employ similar composition. FourWindsWoman, however, although 'classic' in pose, is contemporary: the woman appears at leisure, rather than at labor; and she constructs a spiritual 'soul-catcher,' rather than a traditional item of necessity. And, unlike Smith's thread maker, the light, loose garment, the hair undone and loose, and the more casual posture of James's young subject lends a sense of relaxed freedom to the individual portrayed. Furthermore, for a contemporary American viewer, the FourWindsWoman pursues what today must be viewed as an alternative to conventional beliefs: It is an act of choice. As in much photography, such context, as well as genre, collaborates significantly with the finer details of its subject. Much of the photography of "Within Sight," in its quality of technique and often in a photographer's individual choice of genre, could easily be imagined in Life magazine or a similar venue. One recalls Magnum Photos Inc, founded in 1947, as commercial photographers rebeled against 'editorializing' with captions, and aesthetic misuse of their art. One founder of Magnum, Henri Cartier-Bresson, learned from Andre Kertesz and sought Life magazine technical quality with 'human interest.' It was Cartier-Bresson who developed the concept of "'the decisive moment' -- an interplay between form and content caught at its revealing climax," and his work must certainly be a guiding presence at the Jane Addams Center Photography Program.
The Day's Catch by Fernando Quilis captures a view of the commonplace in an evocative instance. It focuses upon a specific, 'decisive moment' which a casual viewer might otherwise pass over with inattention. In Quilis's The Day's Catch, the camera lens freezes the moment and frames it for contemplation. The title suggests an additional overtone: a pun in which a viewer might equate these boats as congruent to the strings of fish they capture. As in many of the photographs by this artist, the image is an anchor, against which an added caption supplies an interpretive framework. In fact, many of the photographs in "Within Sight," demand careful attention to an interplay of the image presented with its attending titles. It has been said that the 'decisive moment' genre, now well established, can be taken to cliche, but it is difficult, a very personal choice, to distinguish set convention from the ever re-emerging, what is with us and a part of us, whether we will it or not. The Audience by Kerry Bolger was taken on the Catalina Islands, Florida. In this photograph, sea gulls gather before a young girl, the photographer's daughter. (Bolger frequently uses her children as subjects.) Like Bolger's self-portrait with daughter, Introspective, or her young couple, poised in embrace, Intertwined, Bolger's photograph, The Audience, veers close to popular commercial image, and yet it is poignant and elicits empathy, if not perhaps a bit of envy. Bolger's work is often 'Romantic,' but it is honest and its innocent charm is attractive. Photography as a medium is widely noted for collaboration with caption or text -- connotation. It is a medium which by its nature and evolution remains self-conscious of its framing, of being viewed, and of external reference. "Within Sight" includes Vigil and Man of His Word, both by Margaret Lakin, and these photographs work explicitly to exploit that medium's strong links with text, context, and supplement. Man of His Word is a construction in which text is projected onto the three-quarters portrait of a young man. In Vigil, natural wood-grain texturing is similarly superimposed upon the face of a sleeping woman. Lakin's art succeeds -- it is visually direct -- but it seems as well a metaphor for a crucial aspect of its photographic medium. Roland Barthes, in Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (Hill and Wang: 1981), in attempting to analyze meaning as associated with photographs, distinguished a denotative or literal significance, and a connotative aspect dependant upon culture and practice. (Graham Clarke's The Photograph clarifies Barthes's insight by coherent application and clear examples.) Lakin's work brings the conceptual into the overt and the actual.
If photography, more than any other artistic medium, raises the question of image, context or external reference, that may well be due to its intervening mechanical nature. Paul Strand asserted in 1917: "The Photographer's problem is to see clearly the limitations and at the same time the potential qualities of his medium, for it is precisely here that honesty no less than intensity of vision is the pre-requisite of a living expression." A work such as Margaret Lakin's Under Siege calls the viewer to reach beyond even its stated caption. This photo of the Brachiosaurus erected on campus at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History foils against and beyond its title to evoke fantasies a la Stephen Spielberg's Lost World, a King Kong-style incitement. "Within Sight" offers work which clearly reveals that what a viewer brings to the work is integral to the art, and is often counted upon by the artist. Durrell Dew's Taking a Drag is a case in point. This portrait of two men in womens' dress, puffing away on their cigarettes, plays a pun with its caption, one immediately intelligible foremost to an American viewer. Dorothy A. Warner's Olive Oyl On Ice is another example of whimsy, and here, 'Olive' is skated into the ice and clarified, rather than a figure incidently at game upon the ice. The 72 photographs of "Within Sight" should be viewed with both Roland Barthes and Paul Strand in mind. This is consistently high quality work, and like any truly skilled performance, one accepts it readily; and only upon reflection does the viewer absorb how much informed reflex, insight and technique enter in.
The photograph needn't be 'objectified,'that is, seen as art object centered by viewer reference. "Within Sight" offers numerous fine examples of 'pure' image. Henry Callahan, who in 1946 joined the Institute of Design in Chicago, then directed by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, was kindred soul with its many Bauhaus refugees. Callahan stated in 1962: "It's the subject matter that counts. I'm interested in revealing the subject in a new way to intensify it. A photo is able to capture a moment that people can't always see." Sunset in the Grand Canyon by Fernando Quilis harkens to the landscapes of an Edward Weston or Ansel Adams. Sunset in the Grand Canyon views landscape in grandeur and without human presence: pristine, if only in photograph. In such a work, the caption is pretty much irrelevant. It is the subject, and the artist's selectivity, which predominates. In each and every such work, it is the eye and reflex of the artist which determines what a viewer sees, and often the latter's response. In this vein, works such as Kristin Opaskar's Cathedral Sky or Amro Khorshid's Transitions reveal a sense of urban character which often escapes the hurried and distracted resident. Here, one must include Bharathi Jayaram's River Reflection, a mirroring of high rise structure in river ripples. It is a photography which captures what we might not see, but what we could, and perhaps should. Peter Turner, in his History of Photography, cited Edward Weston, noting: "The 'life' to which he so often referred and wished to capture and hold through photography was not to be found in the day-to-day routine of simply living because 'the camera lens sees too clearly to be used successfully for recording the superficial." Many of Bharathi Jayaram's pieces -- Serene Swamp, Creek of Consciousness, Maja, Snow Sitting on Branches -- constitute a meditation upon natural instance. In these, there is visual clarity, and yet a timeless, Romantic resonance. Jayaram's photographs do often focus on fleeting moment, imagination's deepest perception -- a bit of Eliot Porter and the scenic, artistic sensitivity, albeit in black and white. "Within Sight" does include a number of photographs which can be termed 'formalist': an almost abstractionist or reductive approach which focuses on an image's visual elements in light of flat geometry; what photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, termed 'a picture of shapes.' The most direct example of this is The Corncob by Fernando Quilis. Quilis's work captures a contemporary, terraced high rise from a radically close angle at the structure's ground floor, and the analogy -- caption joining with image -- is apt. In like manner, Totally Stumped by Dorothy A. Warner zooms in for a close reading of the shapes and textures of a cross-cut tree stump, and here, the purely formal, geometric values inherent in the natural object form the aesthetic focus. A similar approach motivates Sand Tracks by Bharathi Jayaram, although here the knowledge that a living creature has created the features adds a reflective overtone. "Within Sight" includes works by William von Hartz, from what we would not normally see -- two photos of the Helipad Walkway, Chicago Hilton, to what we might casually over look, this photographer's Boat Hatch, Fire Hat, and Checkers. Each of these, regards an object as a visual focus for contemplation. The gallery annoucement's featured image, Still Leaf, by Dorothy A. Warner well exemplifies this trend. A viewer, perhaps for the first time, is directed to contemplate each and every vein of a natural logic of growth. "Within Sight" also includes examples devoted to a 'slice of life,' and documentary concern. Resolve, from an anti-handgun protest, and the engaging Outrage, both by Todd Woelfl, were taken during the "Million Man March." A similar concentration on the life we live, the everyday, is found in work by Alberto Trevino and Amro Khorshid. Trevino's piece, Sam's Nephew, was taken during recreational 'paintball games,' and his State of ..., refers of course to 'state of mind.' Trevino's MasterBASSion was taken of the Chicago band Hustler at "The Double Door" on N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, but it stands in for a universal aspiration of post-high school youth. In some works, title suggests a hidden narrative. Such is the case with the discarded orange rinds portrayed in Dorothy A. Warner's piece, Hilda's Dismay. Similarly, the close attention to the barbed wire which tops the masonry wall in Vicky Jame's Escape, in its contradiction with that title, provokes conclusions from a viewer. French writer, Roland Barthes, once pointed out that in the past images had elucidated texts, and with the photograph today, so often text, caption or title, sheds light upon the photographic image. Each enters upon this work with his or her own experience, but every visitor withdraws with sight stimulated and refreshed. The savvy visitor to this showing will buy some of his favorites -- they are available at the gallery. Sight is foremost among our five senses. And Photography is most provocative in bringing to the fore questions about what the artist places "Within Sight": image per se, why the photographer presents it, what we bring to it. This exhibition offers a range of approaches and intents in high quality print. Look and See, Gaze, Behold, View, Survey and Observe, Examine and Discern... Scrutinize -- "Within Sight" offers experience and opportunity. A four-page gallery program lists the photographs and includes brief biographies for each exhibitor. The exhibition was spearheaded by Elisabeth J. Rublev, Gallery Director, and Richard Stromberg, co-founder of the Jane Addams Center Photography Program. "Within Sight: 72 Photographs by 12 Jane Addams Center Photographers" will be on display at the James M. Hunt Gallery, Jane Addams Center, Chicago, until December 10, 2000. The gallery website is: http://www.jmhgallery.org --G. Jurek Polanski Jurek Polanski has previously written and art edited for Strong Coffee in Chicago. He's also well known and respected among the Chicago museums and galleries. Jurek is currently a Visual Arts Correspondent for ArtScope.net. Editorial Note: Books mentioned in www.artscope.net reviews are often in print and may be purchased through this site's Barnes & Noble link. Of particular interest is Beaumont Newhall's The History of Photography (Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.: 1978), and Peter Turner's History of Photography (Exeter: 1987). Highly recommended for its aesthetic and historical discussion is The Photograph by Graham Clarke (Oxford University Press: 1997). |
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