LOCAL COLOR ... AND B&W, TOO
Eight photographers on display
Ayoung woman dreams, books spilling to the floor, while a horse looms behind her.
An overhead view of geology is so detailed and pulsing with energy that it seems to morph into a new life form.
A fading airplane contrail twists into the shape of a spiral seashell shape as it disappears into a sunset.
These vastly different styles and subjects are just a sampling of the diversity of artworks from local photographers on display at photo-eye gallery through April 22.
Since the majority of the artists the gallery represents are from outside New Mexico, people don’t tend to think of it as a place to see local photographers, said gallery director Anne Kelly.
“We wanted to have an exhibition showcasing our local artists,” she said. “It’s something we’d never really done before, to bring everyone together.”
The show gives a taste of the
array of talent and range of subjects that local photographers are producing.
Steve Fitch, based in Peña Blanca, went on a lot of road trips as a child, according to Kelly, so he has been inspired to explore roadside images, such as hotels and drive-in theaters, and neon images associated with them and other businesses. In many, glowing lights emerge from a dusky setting.
Kelly explained that Fitch experimented with night photography back when it wasn’t terribly common, using both color and black-and-white film. A recent series, “Gone,” documents abandoned homes that Fitch has encountered on his travels, she said. He has taught photography at Princeton University and at the College of Santa Fe/Santa Fe University of Art and Design.
While Fitch goes on the road, another photographer in the show, James Pitts, spends most of his working time in his Santa Fe studio. His photos in the show feature monochromatic images of carefully arranged plant life in vases or lying on a
surface, very much about form and shape.
Kelly describes them as “exquisitely printed platinum prints,” adding that he uses a hand-applied emulsion technique that requires long exposures under either the sun or a light exposure machine. “It’s the most stable type of photographic print,” she said.
His works on display are floral still lifes, but he’s working on other projects, including a book of photographs that show humans’ lasting marks, “anomalies,” on the landscape.
Edward Ranney had an exhibition a few years ago at the New Mexico Museum of Art, Kelly said, and has made his photographs anywhere from Peru to his own Santa Fe area home. Much of his work, done exclusively in black-and-white, has documented ancient humanmade markings in Peru, such as the famous Nazca Valley lines.
But the images featured in the current photo-eye exhibit show both the landscapes around his home and a daughter in an enigmatic, bird-like costume. Light plays a major role, whether as reflections on water or as light images emerging from a dark background.
Santa Fean Jamey Stillings, meanwhile, focuses on renewable energy and sustainability issues, particularly around water. He may be best known for his photographs of construction of a bridge at Hoover Dam, but he has pursued photography projects around the world.
At photo-eye, his works on display take a birds-eye view of the San Juan Basin, with aerial perspectives revealing details of landscape and geology in subtle gradations of subdued color. “He tends to work on long-term projects,” Kelly said, noting that the work on display was done by digital photography.
Based near Española, Laurie Tümer has been producing a cloud series of photographs, with both color and blackand-white images of clouds in formations from furious to serene. “It’s a project she’s been working on since 2010,” Kelly said. While Tümer’s photos at photoeye are among the largest prints she’s produced in the series, they’re still not all that big.
Her work is featured in even smaller format, accompanied by a handy magnifying glass, in the current “Small Wonders” exhibit at the New Mexico Museum of Art. “She sees (the images) as really intimate moments,” Kelly said. “She makes them small so people will walk up and take a closer look.”
Jo Whaley, whose work with stage sets from the Scottish Rite Center was featured in a recent Journal North story, constructs still lifes from natural and man-made objects in her Santa Fe studio. Her photos on display at photo-eye are from her Natura Morta series, color-drenched images of objects arranged against a painted background.
Another photographer in the show, Brad Wilson, also of Santa Fe, is widely known for his studio portraits of animals taken against a plain background. His photos on display at photo-eye include a dead fish from the Salton Sea set against a stainless steel backdrop with a subtle green patina, and a portrait of a woman with her hands and arms pressed against a watersplattered window.
“In general, he’s interested in looking at different imagery a little out of context,” Kelly said.
And the eighth photographer in the show, Zoë Zimmerman of Taos, produces black-and-white studio works from 8” x 10” film, according to Kelly. “She’s known for a lot of alternative processes,” Kelly said.
Her photos in the exhibit are from the “Her Dream” series, which features her daughter in a series of poses and settings with a vaguely surreal quality to them.
But they don’t involve manipulation of a photograph. When you see smoke rising from a dollhouse near the sleeping young woman, it’s because Zimmerman set the dollhouse on fire in the studio. And the dappled horse behind the sleeper on a couch was not Photoshopped in — it actually was brought into her studio to pose, Kelly said.
“She does work with the albumin process a lot,” Kelly said, referring to a historic photographic process that uses silver and egg whites.
The exhibit will be on display through April 22.