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WITHINSIGHT
Winter 2001

January 21, - March 18, 2001
Mon-Fri: 12-7 PM;
Sat 12-1, 2-5 PM
Sun 12-5 PM.

James M. Hunt Gallery
Jane Addams Center
Hull House Association
3212 North Broadway Street
Chicago, Illinois 60657
Telephone: 773/ 549-1631, ext. 512
http://www.jmhgallery.org

Imagine you could reproduce whatever you can see, immaculately. But restrict that now to only black and white. Could there still be a sense to art? Of course -- it is the essence of photography. Black and white refines... which is to say, it focuses the attentive eye. The proof is there -- just within sight. "WithInSight: Winter 2001" at the James M. Hunt Gallery of the Jane Addams Center, Chicago, runs until March 18, 2001. It is a sampling of some of the best of pure photographic technique.

Before you enter, you should come with all the means with which to see, to experience it in full. One of the most prominent photographers, Minor White (1908-1976), noted among the many 'intangible characteristics' of photography: Selection (an attitude); Previsualization (a discipline); Essence, (an underlying meaning, 'heart'; experience, a 'finesse'); and, as well, a 'poetic temperament,' be it "epic, comic, lyric, or tragic." (In Image, October: 1956). Beyond those basics, general trends or genres have certainly emerged. There are some problems with the words (words being merely words), which was writer and supporter, Susan Sontag's explicit point - "the vocabulary of art is at variance with the medium of photography (but we have no other.)" You, a viewer, are fortunate. "WithInSight: Winter 2001" sets out a complete array of photographic art; and you can forget the words. Despite all commentary, sight is the best of introductions.

Formalist, 'abstractionist,' the (self-conscious) photomechanistic craft, 'human interest,' and the captured image as a document, as well as scenic views or mood embodied on an acetate in silver residue.... Look closely. As well -- in content -- there are the incongruities in merely what it is one saw, at least, at first: humor, wit, a whimsy found within 'the real' -- ("If you hadn't had seen it for yourself, you would never have believed...." "Fact is stranger than Fiction.") Even facts may err. (Every fact itself, as seen, may even lie.)

The Formalist.... Several excellent pieces frame the formal geometries which our eyes, with little thought, accept. Here, the alertness and awareness of the photographer's eye lead the casual viewer's gaze. Shelly Bell Eckerman's Under The Boardwalk (2001) is a case in point. Here, the photographic eye reveals in lattice shadows on darkened, rounded mounds of sand, a rippling pattern and dynamic rhythms, a centipeded sequence of repeated and distorted forms. Similarly,Peer (not 'Pier') by Fernando Perez displays a tour de force of heightened perception: part-way landings centrally stabilize and anchor the rhythms of stairs skewed by the angle of view. Perez has discovered in solid architecture a visual ballet of abstracted form. "WithInSight: Winter 2001" offers a fine selection of such work. Much of it arises out of man-made architecture, but a kindred aesthetic derives from natural shape and contour just as well. In such work, the human photographer, aware of the exactitude of the camera, and equally aware that what we actually see at first sight is not necessarily a reflection of 'true fact,' is freed to explore our sight, rather than our knowledge of the actualities.

One finds in this exhibition examples of the dispassionate examination of formal qualities in what is observed. That examination is possible for photography in a manner which is problematic for, say, painting. (It may be less so for sculpture). Ansel Adams noted it:

The purely analytic nature of photography and the purely synthetic nature of painting, for example, are seldom realized. In the former case, the subject is untouched; only the camera moves into optimum position. Perhaps obstructions in the line of sight can be removed and even objects of obviously distracting character can be extracted from the field of view, without depreciating the 'purity' of the statement. But when any arrangement in situ takes place, any figure is "posed," any condition of lighting is altered, something more than observation or pure analysis enters the pattern. We are now exercising some control of the world by establishing some elements of form within the matrix of chaotic shape. As this control expands, interpretation becomes modified by the flux of recording; finally, with total arrangement, we shall have only total recording. The creative qualities are found in entirety in the scene before the camera. There is nothing right or wrong in these various combinations -- but it is, I think, important that the photographer recognize the basic differences involved.

In The Camera Viewed (1979)

Such a medium exploits the visitor's naivete, the belief that 'The camera cannot lie': and demonstrates that not only can it lie, but it can, as well, jest, create, and mime beyond just what the casual eye accepts. It is apt that an art of light and shadow capture several moments when shadow itself contributes to a particularly telling moment: one in which it mimes what is there before us, in unexpected contortions, unyielding form and substance; where shadows play as devious alter ego.

This is precisely what the viewer confronts in several prints by Matt Nolker: View From the Van Buren Elevated Stop or his Walking, Uptown, These draw their effectiveness from the human shadows' mockery of rigid human form . And these photos play with all those possibilities. In View From the Van Buren Elevated Stop, from a 'bird's eye view,' the persons are seen as compressed and crumpled entities; it is their shadows which extend and fully draw -- fulfill -- their physical humanity. And in Walking, Uptown, the profiled young man at left proceeds apace; his shadow seems to hesitate and stand at rest: 'body at motion, soul at rest.' The work at the James M. Hunt Gallery is generally 'purist.' There are no darkroom manipulations, 'tricks of second-guessing' -- afterthoughts. In this exhibition, human eyes perceive that it is the light and shadows which jest, mimic, mock, complement, flatter, mislead or, even more, deceive....

Perhaps, because of this, "WithInSight: Winter 2001" is also generous in a sense of humour. Photographers seem especially aware of images that mirror reality and the emotional investments individuals place on this. Chuck Stebelton's image of a girl retouching her lipstick, and using a table knife as a compact mirror -- Stebelton's SJMOST (2001) -- confirms the observation. This photograph forms a subtle counterfoil, a companion piece, to Mari Shopsis's Clowning, Belmont El (2001) where the gallery visitor meets a mime (the brunt of innumerable jibes) self-awaredly mugging for the lens through a mirror.

This is an exhibition in which what the eye perceives is central. Susan Berger's Trudi (2000) serves as a poignant reminder. The gallery visitor is met with the gaze of... three eyes. (There, of course, must be four, but three is what we see.) In Berger's photograph, human subject joins as kindred soul to canine fellow mate. A woman stares out at the viewer, and mirrors the viewing (and, here, animal) eye before her... Once more a direct gaze at the gallery visitor. Naturalist, Loren Eiseley, once referred to Argos, the dog of Odysseus, who despite 19 years of absence, rejoiced at the sight of his regained master, and then died fulfilled. Eiseley wrote: "The magic that gleams between Argos and Odysseus is both the recognition of diversity and the need for affection across the illusions of form." All that is here -- In this photography.

An allied insight rests in Lynn Corda's Shattered (2001). Here, the female subject's image stares out at the viewer through a surface of hexagonal interstices. The subject's left eye (image right) appears to wink... mischievously, but even that may be deceit... that eye is distorted by a juncture formed by conjoined glass bricks; and it is captured in photography.

What the eye sees, and the human affections bound to it, play important roles in "WithInSight: Winter 2001." 'Human interest' genres are well represented. Some photographs, such as Claire Mok's Chillin' (2001) allude to human form in the 'at-this-very-moment' whimsical. In this photograph, a humong-erosity of snowfall on the window ledge, added to by deft, inventive hands, creates a massive human parody -- 'Frosty, the Snow Mount Man.' This is the photographic eye, clever and with wit.

Claire Mok, in her photographs, plies human countenance itself as both medium and subject matter. Her Face the Nation (2001) draws still more specific attention to the (is it really of necessity?) sculptural glazed-eye vision shaped from out of this human replicon. (In fact, this comes from historical convention, and not inevitable necessity: Jean Antoine Houdon, in his 18th century portrait of Voltaire, gave that portrait telling pupils by a clever ruse -- Houdon sculpted the effects of light and pigment into the eyes by recessed cuts -- negative space as shadows). In this photograph, Claire Mok plays the material as is: she records a sculpture; one which seemingly views the world beyond with blank or clouded eyes. And that -- just as a pure and photographic 'shot' -- conveys a particular, specific revelation.

With eyes very wide open -- a timeless, ancient gaze upon the world is revealed anew. The photographs of David Margolin deal exactly in human interest and, as well, the documentary aspect of photography. Margolin's Kagbeni, Nepal (2001) stands as witness. A viewer is presented with dwelling walls, hand-crafted, each irregular with stone by no stone quite alike; one sees a ladder built by successive twists of hand, out of varying pieces of sought-out wood; and finally, at image left, a single individual, clothed with articles chosen each by the choice of a moment -- the momentarily selected moulding of a specific personality within a living, and continuing, cultural tradition. David Margolin has traveled much, has seen a world, exotic... at least, to the American visitor. And Margolin places it as center to his art. A viewer comes before his Desert Mother, or the artist's Tibetan Prayer, or his Raji and Rajki... Margolin's Prambanan in the Rain; and therein views a world, a human experience, entirely new to him. Which is not to say that an art such as Margolin's is unrelated to the viewer's own local circumstance. This photographer's own self-portrait is Unemployed at 34, which may well be the price of worldly insight.

A certain groundedness, uncovered by photography, may very well be close to home. And... here, regard the photographic work of Mari Shopsis. "WithInSight: Winter 2001" presents this artist's Orchestral Arrangements, Maxwell Street; her Soft Focus, Cabrini Green; and, among further works, her Dressed for Battle. What is close at hand, around the block, may, to the very set-in-ways and comfortable, be revealed for the very first time as unfamiliar and exceptional.

Heidi Levin's Completing the Torah, while a portrait of religious dedication, also reflects the close focus of its chronicler. In a very real sense, like discerns its like -- the giving of one's self is what in the end brings forth still greater ends. Levin, wide in range and never fully at rest, offers several items in this show, and Garfield Park Conservatory reaffirms that the photographic vision here is always aware of formal strictures within art, as well as a significance beyond.

The most explicit key to all these images rests in A Negative Self-Image again by Matt Nolker. The photographer here examines a strip of film, his negatives. Much as in M.C. Escher's noted prints, the viewer at last is clued into the ultimate revelation: that what the senses and the mind can know, can never be the philosopher's much sought 'thing in its very self,' Immanuel Kant's Ding an sich. Behind flat semblances, a creative instinct orchestrates. And so, within the provenance of photographic art, a play with what the eye must see and what the analytic mind can know is toyed upon.

Yet -- play: a toying with our sight -- is important for itself. Among mere creatures, it is a serious survival skill; and even more among the civilized and comfortably secure, it represents a renewing source of wonder; and, it is often as well, a spontaneous surprise. Carl G. Jung, in a last work explaining his psychological theory for the layman: his essay, "Approaching the Unconscious," (In Man and His Symbols, Dell Publishing: 1981), offered a photograph of miniature cars in a "W" configuration, ["W" being German for 'V'], and there Jung commented:

The toy cars forming the Volkswagen trademark in this advertisement may have a "trigger" effect on a reader's mind, stirring unconscious memories of childhood....

E.J. Rublev's photograph, Size Makes No Difference, is a clever bit of wit, and it really does charm. The photographer, as impromptu, draws and plays, unknowingly, in spontaneous impulse and with serendipity, upon the insight of Jung. Rublev stated: "The toy just appeared one morning. Someone picked up a ticket and stuck it there. I walked out that morning and there it was.... I went and got my camera." And we smile. Serendipity has placed a leveling of adult justice and childhood innocence in unexpected juxtaposition. Such spontaneous insight is precisely what the photographer is prepared to capture. The knowledge that photography captures actualities before it, with an added, almost omniscient prescience, is what insures this instance its distinct effect.

Photography can otherwise document the human mood: a reflection on the part of the observer; an awareness expressed by the observed. In the majority of this art, what is art lies in the seeing rather than in the orchestration of cumulative techniques and prior intent. It is an art of receptivity to the seen, precisely as it's seen, less than any afterthought or constructive artifice. What is experienced at a given moment differs, significantly, if subtly, from what is known from analyzed experience.

It is not so simple.... to see the human being as it really lives; nor to understand that what we see is different than what we know. The average person passes by each day, and does not see. We grow inured. And the busied eye rarely attends to much of the very real -- to the everyday activity about it. It is the photographic gaze that captures fleeting sight for consideration, long and afterward.

The artists featured in this show are: Susan Berger, Lynn Corda, Shelly Bell Eckerman, Heidi Levin, David Margolin, Claire Mok, Matthew Nolker, Fernando Perez, E.J. Rublev, Mari Shopsis, Chuck Stebelton. And they are worth a trip to see.

"WithInSight: Winter 2001" will be at the James M. Hunt Gallery of the Jane Addams Center, Chicago, until March 18, 2001. Richard Stromberg is Director of the Photography Program. E.J. Rublev directs the Gallery.

--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 may be purchased through this site's Barnes & Noble link. Of interest is Man and His Symbols edited by Carl G. Jung (Laurel Edition/Dell Publishing: 1981). Another informative source is The Camera Viewed: Writings on Twentieth Century Photography, edited by Peninah R. Petruck (E.P. Dutton: 1979). Loren Eiseley is quoted from The Unexpected Universe (Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.: 1969).