From Near and Afar

From near and afar, photographer Neal Rantoul has shaped his career in photographing primarily in the landscape.  When I look at his work, I don't feel I'm looking through the eyes of a landscape photographer, but rather a thinker and note taker.

Through his lens, Rantoul is taking notes, visual documents of the cities and spaces he encounters on his every journey.  They are never just straightforward photographs, rather a grouping or 'series' of photographs are created to document the place.  Often times you need to see the full portfolio of images to figure out just how Rantoul wanted you to see what he saw.  Sequence also plays a great deal in his process.  You would never understand that by viewing just one photograph. 

The images in this portfolio, which he refers to as: Trees, An Italian Series, were shot in Italy in the fall of 2009 during a sabbatical from his teachings at Northeastern University.  This region in Italy was not new to Rantoul.  He often made pilgrimages to this area in the 1990's while teaching summer workshops in Venice.

Rantoul states, "On my way from Venice to Trieste, I drove through this flat agricultural area and became intrigued by these grouping of trees. Over the course of a few weeks I returned again and again to this area to photograph.  During some of my first trips to this region, I worked in color, but decided that by printing them using a black and white duotone process (the process of introducing a warmer color into the black & white tones) rendered their beauty best."

Curtis Wehrfritz | Daguerreotypes re-visited in the 21st century.

Curtis Wehrfritz (Toronto, Canada)
Secret Heart
1/2 plate daguerreotype

One of the best ways to meet new, emerging artists to exhibit in the gallery is by attending portfolio review events.  I met Curtis Wehrfritz, a Toronto, Canada based artist first at FotoFest Paris, then five months later at PhotoLucida in Portland, Oregon.  As he sat across the table from me, he began to unwrap these delicate mirrored images. These mirrored images are referred to as Daguerreotypes or 'dags'.  I was amazed to see that there was someone taking a vintage process like this and bringing it into the 21st Century.

Wehrfritz uses photography "as a story telling device", and in this series, Fluidrive, he focuses on the use of ritual.  He explained, "I am interested in a lyric image that can be revisited by the viewer in the way one revisits the feelings created in a song or prose."

The experience of interacting with and or observing a work of art is personal and relative to the viewer's taste --their likes and dislikes. But what if when you looked at the art, you could also see yourself reflected back.  This is precisely what happens when viewing a Daguerreotype. Your reflection can be seen in the silvery, mirrored surface all the while hovering below the surface, a ghostly photographic image presents itself.  I've always wondered if this dual gaze changes how a viewer thinks about or reacts to looking at Daguerreotypes.

"When Daguerre announced his great invention to the public in the summer of 1839, he explained how it worked but not really what it was for.  The process was obviously a miracle of the age of science, and like any miracle it was self-justifying.  Painters did say that it would be a great aid to art, and physicists said it would be a great aid to science, but the important thing, on which everyone agreed, was that it was astonishing.  Pictures of exquisite perfection had been formed directly by the forces of nature." --John Szarkowski, Looking At Photographs.

Daguerreotypes by Curtis Wehrfritz are on display in the exhibition Processes and Dreams at Panopticon Gallery from January 12 - February 28, 2012.

Emmanuelle Germain | Le Vent #2

Emmanuelle Germain (French)
Le Vent #2, 2009
32x47" archival pigment print

Emmanuelle Germain, Le Vent #2

I first met Emmanuelle Germain as an undergraduate at The Art Institute of Boston in 1992.  We reconnected through Facebook in 2010 and in November of 2011 we met up in Paris for the first time in eighteen years.

The title of her photograph, Le Vent #2, which simply translates to The Wind, captures a young woman, who by first glance looks as if she is levitating off the pavement.  When I spoke to her about the work, she said, "Wind suggests anger to me, that’s what it creates here after a few days...everybody’s aggressive!"

Germain's series Le Vent is a direct contrast to the video project that she had worked on prior where she captured a woman walking slowly through downtown Marseille, France, tracing the steps of her daily commute.  "I wanted to work with someone who had danced, someone interested in gravity, heaviness, the ground, basically, someone who was in control of her movements and not afraid of falling, or getting hurt. 

Aaron Siskind, No. 37 from the series
Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation, 1953

Freezing a moment in time is the essence of what photography is about.  That split second where the click of the shutter now represents the past.  Germain's photograph is reminiscent of many that have come before it.  Two well-known bodies of work that touch on levitation and gravity include Aaron Siskind's series Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation and a project Stephen DiRado did called Jump, a leap-of-faith off of a bridge on Martha's Vineyard.

Stephen DiRado, from the series Jump

Germain ads, "The wind is invisible, it moves everything upside down, it is wild, unpredictable and yet I asked this person to dance with it and use its strength. The results look quiet and peaceful compared to what it took to make these images."

Le Vent #2 can be seen in the exhibition Processes and Dreams at Panopticon Gallery in Boston, MA from January 12 - February 28, 2012.

TED - Talks worth watching

If you are not familiar with TED talks, here are a few art & photography related ones that are thought provoking, entertaining and inspiring.

1.) Vik Muniz 

2.)  JR

3.)  Alison Jackson looks at celebrity

4.)  Edward Burtynsky on manufactured landscapes

5.)  James Nachtwey

6.)  Shirin Neshat

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