THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 1, 1995 TAG: 9412300119
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: TERESA ANNAS
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
NOBODY KNOWS this fact as well as Mark Edward Atkinson: To make a decent living in photography in this area, you've got to be versatile.
Since he moved from his native North Carolina to Norfolk in 1981, Atkinson has shot editorial pictures for top regional and national magazines, including Time, Newsweek, Esquire and Washingtonian.
He has made slick, beautifully lighted studio shots for corporate patrons, from The Cage to Beecroft & Bull.
He also has kept up his personal work, the best known being a body of work culled from eight years of trips taken with Operation Smile to the Philippines, Vietnam, Colombia and other exotic locales.
Operation Smile is a Norfolk-based nonprofit organization that provides reconstructive surgery and health care to poor young people in developing countries and the United States. Like the doctors, nurses and assistants in the field, Atkinson was there to volunteer his services. Using available light and found situations, he documented with feeling the dramatic transitions from facial disfigurement to pride in appearance, and all the emotional moments surrounding such minor miracles.
Those familiar with the 1993 coffee-table book of Atkinson's Operation Smile photographs may be surprised by a solo show of his work at Zeitgeist Gallery, a new commercial fine arts gallery in downtown Norfolk.
It can be folly to presume which style of work is most true to an artist. Who's to say that the slightly grittier Operation Smile candid shots are a more honest expression of Atkinson's soul than his satiny, manipulated, film noir commercial shots?
Does loaded content - and what could be more loaded than a child suffering from deformed features - make a picture more real? As to his commercial imagery: Isn't the surface of an image, the play of light on objects, a kind of content?
Stylistically, the works at Zeitgeist are all over Atkinson's map. Yet some themes could be imagined.
Enticement is the underpinning, from the allure of a product and its design to the restrained seductiveness of a woman of delicate beauty.
On view are a dozen or more black and white images and a few color prints.
Atkinson's use of color is bold - a chirpy-yellow used condom wrapper on a grass-green surface. Lucky Strike cigarette packs are a favorite subject, primarily in honor of the man who designed them - Raymond Loewy.
Much of Atkinson's black-and-white work has been printed dark, with close tonal values, lending an air of mystery. Viewers might be inclined to stare long and hard, searching for the details, like a voyeur hiding in the bushes at dusk.
Darkroom wizardry has made some of these images into something other than what you'd find in the real world. In ``Twins,'' an image reminiscent of the surrealistic doll pictures by early 20th century photographer Hans Bellmer, snippets of baby feet and baby faces peek through a woodsy veil. Atkinson made the image by manipulating a shot he made of a friend's twin toddlers seated precariously in a birdbath.
Atkinson apparently has a thing for propping creatures on pedestals. One picture provides a funny twist on this habit; a tabletop pup, like a bored model, yawns before the camera.
Also humorous is ``Maria in Two-Piece,'' an androgynous-looking young woman of wiry build flexing her meager muscles. She's postured like a guy, while wearing girly attire - a ruffly bikini.
Other images are simply lovely to look at. Two portraits of a woman named Jessica resemble the sort of romantic early 20th century portraiture Alfred Stieglitz made of Georgia O'Keeffe and others. Yet Stieglitz was an exponent of straight photography, and Atkinson likes to experiment with lights and in the darkroom.
Another plainly beautiful picture is a grab shot in The Louvre in Paris of ``Nike of Samothrace,'' the Hellenistic stone figure whose wings are still beating, though she's lost her head. Nike's airy grace was unexpected in such a hard material; sculptors in her day - 190 B.C. - were trying to emulate the freer forms of poetry and painting.
There's a little of that in Atkinson, too.
And while he's putting women on pedestals somewhat, the images suggest he's doing this with a nod to the goddess within these creatures. The seated woman in ``Julia at Seagle's'' looks at us like temptation incarnate, her apple-round face lighted by flash, her long legs stretched out sensually before her. This is no innocent flower. She's ready to strike, and the picture asks: Who will be the lucky one?
Atkinson's show continues through Jan. 9 at Zeitgeist, 132 Granby St. Open weekdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday noon to 4 p.m. Free. Call 622-2517. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
``Julia at Seagle's'' by Mark Edward Atkinson: temptation incarnate,
her apple-round face lighted by flash, her long legs stretched out
sensually before her. This is no innocent flower.
by CNB