In 3 hours spent last  Saturday afternoon at Chelsea galleries I found a lot of time being consumed with video watching. With some art videos requiring 20 or more minutes of viewing, sometimes I find that as intriguing as things are, I might not want to sit still for that duration.

I will recommend visiting Taxter and Spengemann (504 W. 22nd St, Through Feb 10) for the 4 videos which are short enough to watch from start to completion and then again.

Matt Calderwood, by observing common objects  from a fixed point of view makes engaging and meditative videos.

Upon entering the gallery, the most striking video shows a floating light bulb bobbing and spinning in the black space of a large high definition video monitor. Calling to mind a classroom science demonstration of how a ball can be made to float, we are immediately made aware that the bulb is kept aloft by a stream of compressed air, which can be heard hissing on the video sound track. Because of the bulb’s shape, it does not float with the consistency of a sphere. The video image records the bulb, threaded base up, spinning eccentrically, becoming more and more unstable in flight. The air pressure seems to increase, because the bulbs oscillations increase in height and speed appearing ever more dizzying and  absurd. In a few moments, the bulb begins to move  in and  out of the top of the  camera frame, until it is blown completely off camera, followed by a loud popping sound, which would be the bulb breaking after being blown off of the air jet. The short film has humor and magic.

On the gallery’s second floor is a video that begins with the camera frame completely filled with hundreds of wooden match sticks bunched together. The red match heads  are filmed  directly above so the effect is more of  texture than description. For what seems like a surprisingly long time, we sense that the image on the screen is flickering, provoking the thought that there are many matches out of frame that are burning and illuminating the matches. The light becomes brighter and flickers strongly,  the intense red of the match heads seen in the video image  starts to degrade, becoming lighter and more yellow, then whiter. Finallly the flames  appear at the bottom of the camera frame, igniting the match heads consecutively across the entire image. The flames reach the greatest intensity, diminish, the wood of the match heads burns for a fitful moment, flames out, smolders, and extinguishes. It all seems to take longer than I would have imagined, but the whole process fascinates in the same way that playing with matches  would captivate a child. Calderwood asks us to take the time and look at the seemingly trivial, and what he shows us is surprisingly rich.

Reading the Bellwether web site today about the   Brent Green exhibit  clears me of my guilty feelings that I should of stayed to see all of the videos showing there. Turns out there that there are  (according to the press release) 11  20 minute videos. The brief look that I did take at the videos being screened at the gallery was fascinating. Using stop animation and handmade film cells, the world in these videos is somewhat nightmarish, resembling the films of the Brothers Quay and Tim Burton with a little William Kentridge thrown in. The animation had a somewhat staccato quality. The artist used acetate animation cells, and these were very much in evidence, because the camera lighting was reflected in the material. Ordinarily, animators would  eliminate these reflections. The artist also used tape to hold the cell in position, and the resulting effect  shows not only the animation of the action, but also the movement of the acetate cell across the image area, as well as the pieces of tape moving about the cell. This work is both crude and sophisticated; Brent Green is a strong artist. (134 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY 10011, between 18th and 19th Streets Closes on Saturday)

Amy Yoes at Michael Steinberg Fine Art.526 West 26th St. Suite 215 Painting and sculpture with video,  Video with painting and sculpture, and small photographs of painted sculpture. Yoes uses these media in varying proportions but to good effect. The main room at the gallery has a large painted sculptural relief jutting out from wall, suggesting “built in” shelving or furniture.  Two videos  are projected within the space on the wall occupied by the  relief. One  animation depicts  a ball of clay changing shape and rotating, and the other image shows an animated thick black line that  incrementally appears and disappears.

A single channel video  employs a stationary camera to make a  stop animation of a sculptural set with shapes reminiscent of the room installation. In this engaging film loop, objects mechanically move about the set, and various white panels appear to be covered in black paint, only to have the black disappear as soon as it appears. It is  is  short film loop, but one could watch it over multiple cycles to see the transformations taking place in  the sculpture.

In the back gallery are black and white photographs of small painted constructions, similar to that of the video. In these images, the ambiguities of space that can be created in painting by the use of  shading, volume and line are captured. When looking at these photographs,  it is difficult to differentiate the  actual space and volume from that which is merely painted.

The investigation of painted spatial illusion through photography seems to be the concern of many artists these day, and Amy Yoes has added her fresh insights.

At Max Protetch ( 511 West 22nd Street, New York, New York 10011, through Feb 17th) Tim Hyde, comes late to the world of  Night, Urban and industrial landscape photography. Previously working in the commercial film industry, Hyde’s images, while at first atmospheric, quickly remind the viewer of  ot other artists’ work done earlier.

There is a short video which combines Hyde’s knowing eye and flair for dramatic composition along with the mood of film noir. His most elaborate work, the scene is of a russian high-rise apartment complex. Filmed at night with a soundtrack of muffled shouts, the barks of dogs and snippets of  incomprehensible  russian , the mood is desolate. The scenes are tightly framed with a stationary camera and the lens is zoomed  in and out to draw the viewers’ eyes. Humans hastily walk across darkened courtyards and wild dogs scamper about.  A young woman on her haunches laughs and talks at the camera while smoking a cigarette. In a different scene a frog hops into the frame. It’s all put together very well and is fairly evocative, but it all seems to be a drama waiting for a narrative. Hyde appears to have in his mind a compendium of strong images remembered from photographs and films he has seen before. He is able to make images that are evocative, but these works are  mainly evocative of the work of others.

Hyde’s most distinctive work is the seven channel video made over several hours during a snowstorm at night. Here the video camera’s auto focus mechanism is unable to find a point of focus, and so the horizontal bank of images rack in an out of focus and definition while the tape runs on. Each video screen shows diffuse, ghostly white images of  a New York City panorama. With this work, the artist has discovered a phenomena of camera technology which he has employed to individual effect.

See you at the galleries!

An excellent photography show can be seen at Yossi Milo, 525 West 25th St. until September 14th. Alessandra Sanguinetti’s work shows the potential for photography to transcend mere description. And she does this with images of farm animals.

Documentary photography can show us subjects we don’t have the chance to see with our own eyes. Far flung and unknown scenes have always been one of the subjects of photography. At its beginning photographers, accompanying explorers, brought back images of the strange and fantastic, whether it be the ruins of ancient civilizations or the untouched natural world. In the 19th Century, photography and exploration were very similar pursuits, practiced by a hearty and determined few.

In time, the practice of photography became an independent exploratory activity driven by the interests and curiosities of the photographer. In the 20th century viewers were fascinated by photographs of the exotic, for example, bygone Paris, rural americana, and drug abusing teenagers. With the cumbersome nature of the picture taking apparatus and uneven results, early photography required a technical ability and fortitude few had.

Today, it’s relatively easy to visit remote parts of our world. Tourists flock regularly to Antarctica or even Mt Everest. Along with the evolution of photographic technology almost anyone can take a picture almost anywhere. As a result of this ease, there are many photographs which faithfully capture the sights.

In the past few years, extraordinary disasters such as Katrina or the World Trade Center disaster have yielded prodigious amounts of photo documentation. In “Here’s New York” – a compilation of thousands of images of the WTC disaster – most pictures were searingly powerful. Yet these images had a sameness to them. The power and interest of the images was from what was described rather than any particular sensitivities for the subject. Whether crudely made or possessing subtlety and insights, a photograph depicting dramatic or unfamiliar subjects can astound and fascinate.

Many galleries are now presenting photographs that have documented an aspect of this world. Viewers are shown what a subject would look like if they too were able to be a witness. But it is a rare photographer who brings insights into the subject that they choose to study. Most often, documentary photographs are simply descriptive images, lacking in any distinguishing viewpoint.

Alessandra Sanguinetti’s images of farm life show a unique vision of this world encompassing both beauty and catastrophe.

Holding her camera at close range and at the height of the particular animal in the photographs, Sangunetti’s images are intensely vivid. By no means bucolic, the images depict the filth, violence, and death that can be found on a farm. Many of the images also evoke a pathos for the animals. The images portray an intelligence in the expressions of those animals photographed alive. In one photograph, two chickens are poised to peck at a tiny animal fetus in the grass. Perhaps a moment after the exposure, they mercilessly consumed the carcass, but from the photograph one might imagine that the chickens felt an empathetic sadness for the dead thing.

To look at Sanguinetti’s photographs makes us transfer our emotions to the animals, and we feel the expression of emotion from these images.

Another print depicts two lambs roped together by the neck as they stagger in opposite directions. The camera point of view is low, showing one lamb wearing what looks like an S&M hooded head mask with no eye holes. The struggle of the two animals as they lurch obstinently towards their chosen directions evokes our human condition: yoked together must we always try to go our own way?

In another image a cow’s eye can be seen peering above a fence. The composition is rigorously formal. At the bottom of the frame, a band of the wood fence can be seen, above that a bit of the cow’s nose, an eye, the ears, and then above the fence three dome like shapes of tree tops. And finally the blue sky. The cow’s eye catches ours and empathically engages Never have animals seemed so alive with emotion and intelligence.

There are 18 works in this show and most reveal a distinctive and insightful vision. For urban dwellers who might not visit farms, the images show us what we have never seen. But it’s unlikely the people who own the farms have ever seen their animals in this way either.

Sanguinetti, exploring what could have been familiar territory, has created a view of the farm which looks completely new and fresh. Sometimes exploration need not be done in far flung corners of the world. There are some who, through the exploration of the close by and familiar, will discover something quite astonishing.

Blessed are the Merciful
Curated by Jerome Jacobs
February 10 – April 29, 20 at Feigen contemporary , 535 W. 29th St.

This group show, has a few photo an video based works. I was quite taken with the two videos by Nezaket Enkici. In one video, the face of a young woman in red head scarf, fills the TV screen. The action begins as she jerks her head about in a circular fashion to begin spinning a bright purple hula hoop about her neck. A sound track with a lively, happy production music score can be faintly heard over the screen’s speaker. Nominally an exercise activity or a child’s game this video imagery of the hula hoop evokes a distinctly unsettling quality. With downcast eyes and a pained expression, the woman’s actions appear to be a manifestation of an obsessive compulsive disorder. This image of a severe looking young woman dressed in ostensibly Muslim garb presents an extreme contrast to the long held western associations about hula hoops: a fun loving, shapely bathing suit clad woman gyrating to keep the hoop orbiting around her body. This video is not about having fun.

In the other video, the woman is clothed entirely in black, including the headdress. Grabbing the ends of her scarf with both her hands, she violently shakes the fabric about her head, in a kind of self flagellation. The audio track reproduces the flapping sound of the cloth.

Ekici’s resume notes her studies with Marina Abramovic, and that tutelage is evident in these videos. Nevertheless, the two short films are quite haunting.

Richard Misrach on view at Pace Wildenstein from March 25 through April 22, 2006 at 534 West 25th Street. Presented in this show is a Whitman Sampler of Misrach’s photographs from over 30 years and most will be rather tasty bites. Beginning with his black and white desert photographs, one can see the innovation and originality that Misrach has brought to this medium. Misrach’s long term pursuit of landscape imagery has yielded a remarkably consistent sensibility which has probed the expressive potential of his subject and materials. The work assembled in this show has been very influential to the work of other photographers.

If you have not followed Misrach’s career, this retrospective will be essential viewing.

Victor Schraeger show at Edwin Houk Gallery, 745 Fifth Avenue through March 4th. This is Schraeger’s second exhibit from a body of work that has significantly departed from the work he has been known for- black and white still life photographs. This show consists of extremely out of focus images of books.

Not long after the advent of this technology, photographers began to discover devices which could be used to degrade clear and accurate descriptions of their subjects. One such device is soft focus photography which actually had its own movement, Photo Secessionism. Over the 150 years of photographic practice, various methods were devised to add interest to what might otherwise be an uninteresting photograph. When technique drives the main characteristic of an image, we should consider if its use is merely a gimmick, or if the artist has reached another level of visual investigation and thought.

For a few years, Victor Schrager, also, has been employing the technique of soft focus. These photographs are immediately suggestive of painting, with a kinship to De Stijl as well as some of the glowing qualities of Rothko. The color palette ranges from muted to intensely glowing colors.

Using just a handful of volumes, without book jackets, Schraeger has selected the books for the color of the covers. The books are then arranged in formal relationships to each other within the picture space. It all could have been a simplistic exercise, but Schraeger has a fine understanding of his technique, and he has created some surprisingly engaging images with great economy.

By using a very limited point of focus and light and shadow, his prints confound our expectations about still life imagery. When looking at Schraeger’s work, the viewer will not immediately perceive that these are images of books. What appears are glowing color shapes in overlapping or free standing configurations. When moving in closer to examine a print, one can see that within each image, a narrow portion of a book cover that is depicted with absolute clarity, while the surrounding books are increasing out of focus. That clear edge, when juxtaposed to an out of focus color of a book behind creates unusual spatial ambiguities. This effect is rather like that which can be seen in the work of Zupcu, which was discussed in an earlier E-mail.

The glowing colors, formal composition and the negative space that can be seen in Schraeger’s have all been explored before in painting. What is unique and exciting about this work is that it declaratively photographic. Schraeger has ingeniously used focus, a characteristic unique to optics and photographic technique to make us think about composition and space.

On a personal note, I seem to be particularly interested in these aspects of representation and spatial illusion. However, photography exploring these issues does seem to be part of a wider sensibility that has appeared in the galleries lately.

It is difficult to pick one point to start with when considering the work of Seydo Keita. The article in the Times touches on many of the issues contributing to the rise in value of his photographs as an art commodity, but asks nothing about what drives the excitement for this work. Comparing Keita’s work to Rembrant has got to be one of the most ridiculous assertions that anyone could make. It is patently obvious that the task of painting even a poor imitation of Rembrant would be far more difficult to accomplish than it would be to make most photographs. Keitas work, naive and humble was made “….outside any aesthetic discourse” but it was made inside for a specific and utilitarian objective, to make photographic likenesses of his subjects. That was his job, and he did it in a workmanlike manner, nothing more. If one were to make comparisons to an artist of the european or western culture, why not choose the work of a photographer, instead of a painter? Look at the portraiture of Arnold Newman whose work unfortunately does not figure prominently in today’s hot art market. Long acknowledged as a master (Like a Rembrant) in the history of photography( a separate precinct from the history of art ), Newman also did photography for hire. Unlike Keita, his understanding of the medium was deep and intuitive. His sensibility was consistent but inventive; each subject would be photographed in a manner that both described the sitters’ appearance, an evocation of the sitters’ personality and the vision of Arnold Newman. Keita’s work has no subtlety or invention. He presents us with nothing more than the description of the sitters and the fabrics in which they are dressed or posed against. To our first world eyes, no doubt, we perceive a quaintness and exoticism, but I can’t see Keita showed any great awareness for doing anything more than making the photograph. There is hardly any variation in the expression of the sitters. All of the poses are similar, and only the distance to the sitter was altered. He used a variety of backgrounds, but beyond that there simply is little exemplary about his photographs. Viewers find a lot to be intrigued with, not the least being the ethnographic information. But this work is far short of Rembrant or Newman.

A more apt reference to compare Keitos work is to that of a small town photography studio in America. In fact a small town American photographer, Mike Disfarmer, was “discovered” and brought to prominence. The images of Disfarmer and Keita have much in common, and seem to appeal to viewers in the same way. There is, as most people realize, a quality of nostalgia encapsulated in photographs, and as photographs get older, they become more interesting. The nature of this interest does seem to be wired into the human psyche, and anything that is older than being simply out of date becomes more appealing, and later talismanic. The flea market would be the base camp of commodification of the old, and a museum such as the Metropolitan would be the summit of value. Since, in some ways the most banal old object is redolent of some essence from the time in which it was made, we find it intrinsically interesting and evocative. Consider a 1964 Ford Falcon, an automobile, undistinguished in any way at the time of its manufacture. It was plain and basic, but no doubt loved by those for whom this was the new car that they could afford. I doubt that there were many who did not trade it in as soon as possible for a newer and better car. That car, used, would serve another owner or subsequent owners until such time as it was sold or destroyed. Yet a few of these cars survived, and when we see one on the street, in new condition, we are likely to spend at least a few minutes contemplating it as an engaging artifact. Everything about this object would resonate in our minds- whether we saw this car new in 1964 or for the first time in 2006. Now consider the 1964 Ferrari 275 P, which would represent a high point in automotive design and engineering in 1964. To our eyes in 2006, both cars are artifacts that generate interest. Are they now of equal stature and significance simply because they evoke the sensibilities of another time? While the original owner of the Ferrari, may too, have replaced it in a year or two, an appreciation for this car probably accompanied its entire existence. I imagine that the excitement generated by this car in 1964 would be comparable to the excitement that it creates today. The same could not be said about the Ford.

If the Ford contains 1964, so too does a photograph made in 1964. It contains 1964 through the encapsulation of details and specificity to be found in that year, possibly that Ford or Ferrari, or fashion particular to that time. Were we to examine two photographs (made with materials unchanged over the years), of a subject that gave no visual cues as to time, I submit that a viewer could not establish the time when either image was made. It is that detail from the past which intrigues us. Keita’s and Disfarmer’s photographs bring us the past and the exotically unfamiliar. But this kind of work brings it to us with all of the evocation of a Ford. By considering the mind, eye and sensibility inherent in a created object we can consider if the work belongs in the Met or at a Flea market. By comparing two photographs of a a timeless subject, we could make a distinction between a compelling image and a merely descriptive photograph. With photography, we must make a distinction between what is being shown and how it is being shown..

Another issue worth examining is print size and quality. Keita’s work was originally contact printed from the camera negatives, meaning that the prints were small. When introduced to the art world the work was exhibited as Jumbo sized, rich high contrast black and white prints. Any photograph can be printed in any size; it’s only a matter of cost. That scale is important in art is obvious, but to take undistinguished works, blow them up to the size of paintings and to do so with masterful tonality and range is to transform the work of Keita to simply the product of a great photography laboratory. This was a totally market driven production, and has nothing whatever to do with the vision of an artist. Collectors upset about how many prints were made are concerned only for their investment. There was nothing authentic in the decision to make the prints large, and it matters not how many are in the edition.

I happened to see for the first time, the work of Elisa Sighicelli at Cohan and Leslie which concludes this Saturday.

Sighicelli’s photographs immediately perplex: the  large format multi paneled work  appears to be at once a reflective print and a light box installation. To my mind, most gallery light box installations appear to be troublingly similar to airport advertising displays, but Sighicelli  avoids that association, Her images are mostly lit from the gallery track lighting. By selectively opaqueing the back of her images, she allows only selected transmission of the light box’s illumination through the photographic print medium.  By doing this, she has altered the expressive range of the shadows and highlights in her work. The results are highlights that truly glow.

Technique aside, her studies of conference rooms and other banal interiors show a formal sensibility and a disorienting point of view. She appears to approach an interior subject as if it were a landscape. Where the foreground of a landscape would recede from the bottom of the picture frame, receding in perspective to form the horizon at some point upon the frame, Sighicelli regards a table top in the same way. She places her camera lens  upon the table surface which in effect makes the table top the “ground” and the back edge of the table becomes the horizon. As the table tops are shiny, the the image of objects in the background  merge with their reflections within the table. Sighicelli focuses her camera at the back of the photographic space, and this, too increasingly dematerializes the photographic illusion  by rendering her foregrounds out of focus.  This artist began with inert, unprepossessing subject matter, but with intelligence and invention, she has created engaging and transformative work. Ask to see the monograph(s) of her work at the gallery counter.

At the same show, Sighicelli exhibited work based on appropriated imagery. Selecting small portions of  XV & XVI century Sienese painting, she crops out the figures and main subjects of these paintings, presenting  the edited results as a light box. The idea that within a larger pictorial composition one can find and excerpt another composition has little conceptual payoff. Doubtless, that strategy could yet again be applied to her  work, and where would the process stop? Compared to  Sighicelli’s landscape and interior works, these do little more than revisit a tired post modern conceit.

Jan Groover at Janet Borden, 560 Broadway, 212 431 0166. January.

A selection of Groover’s late 1970’s Kitchen Sink Still Life images look great in the small catalog sent by the gallery. The Show opens next week. When seeing Groover’s work in the mid 70’s I was most excited the photographs that explored the spatial interrelationships between adjacent photographs. Seeing her triptychs of architecture brought to mind many considerations about space and illusion. By placing a spatial and planar illusion contained within one photograph adjacent to the that of another two frames, Groover was able to create a push pull of space across the span of three frames.

There had been artists constructing assemblages of multiple photographs before, on one front Ray Metzker, and on the other Jan Dibbetts. Groover’s work seemed to nestle between  these two practitioners. Surprisingly, Groover seemed to retreat into her home, and produced a series of still-life photographs of plant leaves and kitchen utensils.  At the time, the images appeared to be a throwback to some of the traditional still-life images of Strand or Weston, without the rigorous formalism.  More obviously they played with reflective surfaces of silverware and the colors that could be captured within the metallic surfaces. All of these objects are cluttering the same frame, and while we should expect to  see  how the elements sit in space relative to each other, Instead, what we see happening is a complex negation of representational space. Completely filling her picture frame with  plant leaves, butter knife blades and other kitchen hardware, the compositions become collage like. There is a transcendent moment when these images exceed simple compositional exercise. Objects in the foreground appear to drop behind objects that we know to be in the background. Surfaces become depths, and depth appears to be flat.

W. Eugene Smith will be exhibited from November 3 through December 23, 2005. A reception will be held on Thursday, November 3 from 6-8pm.

I strongly encourage you all to see the Eugene Smith exhibit. Although Smith, dead since 1978, would not, under our stated objectives for the collection, be part of the purview of our photography committee, this show demonstrates, at the highest level, the potential of documentary photography. Smith photography, long established as a canon in the history of photography, is little known to the long separate and aloof interests of art museums and art galleries. That there continue to be galleries such as Robert Mann solely showing photography only points out that there has been and continues to be a separate precinct for the medium of photography. But as inroads have been made in these last decades whereby some photographers’ (so called) documentary work can now be seen in many museums and galleries, this show should be see, if only for an abject lesson as to what can be done with this medium. This exhibit assembles vintage prints of the “classics”, those famous images that would have been included in any comprehensive examination of Smiths work.

Smith worked as a photojournalist (perhaps most famously for Life Magazine), and nominally his photographs reported on human life. Perhaps his most renowned images were made in World War 2, but after the war, he did photo essays about country doctors, industrial workers, and the human struggle with environmental depredation and poverty.

The descriptive or illustrative use for photography can be seen every day in newspapers and magazines, but the photographs hanging at Mann point out that photography can, at once be both reportorial and transcendent.

With the photographic technology now accessible by virtually everyone, all manner of life is being recorded every day, and those results, as well as news photographs, could be labeled as documentary photography. When is it that documentary photographs should be hung on gallery walls as art? Every day written accounts about people or events are published, but virtually none of it would be characterized as literary works. Now and again, reporters’ accounts do become the stuff of literature. Analogously, shouldn’t there be a distinction between descriptive photographs and those that transcend description, and in doing so become art?

Smith was a photojournalist whose work consistently showed an intuitive sense of composition coupled with an awareness of the expressive qualities of photographic materials. Unlike a drawing or painting where the elements are combined and organized within the picture to construct a composition, a photographer, has at times, to instantaneously orient the camera frame in relationship to the subject. If the subject is animate, and comprises a multitude of elements, it takes a quick and instinctual eye to bring the camera to the chosen distance, angle and relationship to the subject. Like Cartier Bresson’s photographs, it is impossible to wish that the composition of his imagery were any different. In looking at Smith’s photographs, it becomes evident just how finely his sensibilities were tuned. With the exception of a few images which border on treacle, his photographs encapsulate a varied portrayal of human emotion. Photographing mostly with available light, his black and white prints have rich, dark shadows, and strong highlights. The work in this show is essential. At once it describes aspects of the human condition, and also probes the potential for artistic expression.

I am not positing the idea that contemporary photography should be carried on in the manner of Eugene Smith, but I do think that his work represents a high water mark for documentary work. When we look at documentary work today, we should ask if the work is simply reporting events (dramatic or otherwise) or do the photographs tell us about the potentials of the medium and the sensibilities of the artist. Smith’s work does both.

Hanging now are two photography shows that consider similar issues. Sonnabend Gallery is exhibiting Hiroshi Sugimoto’s series of large scale still life photographs of simple, but elegant industrial forms. At the same time, Brian Clamp Gallery is introducing the work of Ion Zupcu. This surprising show is a great counterpoint to the Sugimoto show. Where Sugimoto examines industrial forms and patent models, Zipcu presents small but engaging still life photographs, of what ordinarily is an unprepossessing subject: paper.

Sugimoto’s studies of the modeling of form, light and dark are seductive and fascinating despite the risk that. these photographs could have remained simply academic exercises in light and shade. A few of the images of reductively simple forms do call to mind traditional still life drawing classes in which students are required to render a cube, cone and sphere. Sugimoto, with complete control of black and white photographic technique, masterfully keeps his prints’ tonality within a subtle range of values. The gradations of light and shadow are so finely nuanced that the three dimensionality of the forms appears to barely emerge from a deep black background.

To my mind, Sugimoto, is most successful when he plays with the ambiguities of spatial illusion. This is most clearly accomplished with the iconic, reductive forms presented centered in black space. One series of wooden shapes readily call to mind the sculpture of Brancusi and Arp. Were the objects to be photographed for the maximum illusion of three dimensionality, the contours of his subjects would clearly separate from the background. When directional light models falls upon a subject, the side facing the light source will be modeled and shaped by how the light falls upon the topography of the object. In photography, if the aim is to fully render an illusion of three dimensional volume, it is important to provide additional light to the contours of the subject that are not exposed to the light. This would be characterized in photographic parlance as “fill light.” If no fill is used, the unlit side of the object would render as black. Sugimoto uses his fill to barely separate the shadowed side of his forms from the black background. In doing this he plays with the modeling, allowing the tonal distinction between object and background to be so small that the three dimensional rendering of the objects seems to flip back and forth, creating an illusion of both positive volume and negative space. WIth some of the prints, the object almost appears to drop behind the background, and the background appears as the picture plane, rather than a proper spatial rendering in which the 3 dimensional illusion is definitive. This kind of spatial play has long been explored in painting, but is seldom the concern of still life photography.

Ion Zupcu examines spatial illusion too, but his play with light, shade and three dimensional modeling is strikingly transformative. The objects that he photographs are nominally two dimensional, but the illusion of three dimensionality depends only on shading and focus. In each photograph, basic shapes are modeled. In one photograph a sphere is suggested and in another a triangle. Calling to mind the early 20th century photographs of Man Ray and Moholy Nagy, Zupcu works with strips of paper. He pushes his investigations towards illusionistic space rather than the more graphic arrangements of his predecessors.

In Zupcu’s photographs, shapes constructed from strips of paper are placed on white backgrounds. With surprising economy, he employs the sparest of materials and techniques to explore some of the same spatial ambiguities of Sugimoto’s work. For example, Zupcu simply makes a loop from a sheet of paper, places it on a background and photographs the assembly. By employing a very shallow depth of focus and soft light, the dimensional illusion becomes ambiguous. The image can be seen at once as a sphere, a short tunnel of paper, or as a flat sheet of paper penetrated by a glowing orb. Another image of a sheet of paper bent into an upside down “V” formation spatially reverses foreground to background and back again. Zupcu’s focuses his camera on the front edges of his paper constructions, but allows the back edges of the form to become very fuzzy and indistinct. When looking at the actual object, the eye would see a crisp delineation, but the photograph depicts the object dissolving in an edgeless glow.

Both Zupcu and Sugimoto recognize that there are issues other than description which can be explored with the medium of photography. With great command of their craft these artists are examining how their materials and technique can at once render volume and space both realistically and ambiguously.