From left to right: works by Sarah Shuwaikos, Eugene Cole, and DW Wittman.Seen in “Morphing Medium” at Maine Photo Gallery Photo courtesy of Maine Photo Gallery
If you thought you were familiar with the medium of photography, the exhibition “The Morphing Medium: Photographic Books, Installations, Alternative Process and Ephemera” currently being held at the Maine Museum of Photography (MMPA) (until December 3) It’s likely to be held and, fortunately, explodes that view.
As the title suggests, the show packs in a lot. Too many, in fact. The walls are packed with works by about 20 artists. That is, Dawn Surratt’s fantastical ‘Ephemerality’ installations and quiet, contemplative works like Sarah Szwajkos’ ‘Liminal III, IV and XI’ lack the space required for real immersion. It takes that to fully appreciate their lyricism and sublime aura. Also, the plexiglass cases stuffed with handmade books and other items make these pieces feel a little inaccessible (and crowded).
Deb Whitney’s “Rosy Goggles” series.
However, some variations of the photographic medium will challenge our general conception of what photography is. prize. It was part of Deb Whitney’s “Rose Colored Goggles” series, but the actual production of these pieces didn’t require that. Whitney appropriates a World War II-era photograph of a woman and transfers it to a piece cut from a pink receiving blanket.
These women were soldiers, pilots, riveters, etc., striving for war to keep America functioning and supplying munitions to various military fronts. All are wearing goggles, the lenses of which are embroidered by Whitney with pink stitching. She also has halos, force fields, and other patterns embroidered around her face.
Yes, at first someone had to take the pictures she incorporated. What Whitney created—these essentially feminist works that celebrate the resilience of women and the so-called “women’s works” (embroidery, mothering)—removed a few steps from the photographic process. Thing. It is a powerful and interesting installation that is only tangentially related to the medium.
DW Witman offers us a circular piece that looks like we’re looking into part of the universe through a telescope. But the deep space, star, nebula, and comet trails here are nothing like that. In this series she went out late at night looking for slugs and placed them on silver gelatin photographic paper. What we read as planetary activity is actually the tracks they make at regular time intervals as they cross, skid, and double across the paper.
Photograms, essentially what they are, date back to the beginnings of photography and were especially popularized by Man Ray in the 1920s. The order is different in the sense that it actually records the action (albeit a very slow action), rather than a generic object.
“On Supercluster Arions and Other Phenomena,” Wittman wrote of the work: These works are both science and art, not found in previous photograms. Don’t worry slug lovers either. No slugs were harmed during the creation of the piece.
Book and Triptych by Sarah Szjawakos.
Sarah Szwajkos’ practice includes climbing to high vantage points and photographing the sky. Then mount these large prints in plexiglass. This is a fairly traditional use of media. However, there is no intentional display of source material here. We are simply faced with what appears to be a study in color. Plexi allows light to penetrate the area behind the print itself, making it feel liquid and shiny.
This synergy of technique and practice allows Schweikos to conjure up quite different mental states and spaces. This is expressed in the words of her proclamation (actually a poem she wrote), “what is in between and what is nothing”. Instead of simply capturing a particular moment in a particular condition (the first purpose of photography), it transports us into a mystical state of non-existence.
Barbara Goodbody uses a process called Mordanage for two of her images. It was a process based on 19th century techniques, but further developed in the 1960s. She learned from Jean-Pierre Sudre during her time in Paris. Soak the fully developed print in a wet bath (acidic copper(II) chloride, hydrogen peroxide bleaching solution, acetic acid). This causes the black emulsion to lift off the surface, altering the image. The time a print spends in these baths produces varying degrees of change.
And that’s the point. Again, starting with the picture, the end result is very different from what we see. The composition emphasizes the feeling of the sun and heat. This is an artist-controlled manipulation to enhance one or another effect.
W. Eric Brown’s medium tweaks (at least my favorite in his book, “Quality Enlargements 1/1”) can be found in the Rives RBK paper he uses. The images are inkjet prints of beach scenes, including palm trees, ocean, pools, coves, and various architectural details. But when the ink touches the paper, something strange happens. The 100% cotton material has a texture that amplifies ink absorption. This, combined with the cream color of the paper, produces an image that looks like an old postcard from the 1940s, but on a larger scale. The sense of memory they evoke is not only pleasant, but poignantly palpable.
The image of Carol Eisenberg is a digital manipulation. The source material for the elements she layers and mixes are the photographs she takes and loads into the computer. Then I separate the elements from them and start layering in a way that creates a particularly painterly image. They are only “photographs” in their original state, but presumed as the textures, colors, and applications that a painter might create using pigments and brushstrokes.
Obviously there are many others here. Too much to get into. To understand what many of these artists are doing, it is very helpful to know the techniques they use. Director Dennis Fröhlich needs little prompting to begin his comprehensible exposition. This makes a visit to this postage stamp-sized gallery-museum a particularly interesting and educational experience.
Jorge S. Arango has been writing about art, design and architecture for over 35 years. he lives in portland He can be reached at: [email protected]
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