THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 15, 1996 TAG: 9609180699
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 133 lines
THE CHRYSLER MUSEUM of Art's annual regional photography competition, which opened earlier this month, is kind of blue this year.
I'm not suggesting ``Light Images '96'' is pornographic. I'm talking melancholia, with Miles Davis' trumpet crying in the background.
Washington, D.C., photographer Muriel Hasbun, among the great finds in this exhibit, shows haunting images of drapery, costume and broken panes of glass that are as darkly resonant as the magic realism fiction of which it is reminiscent.
Then there's Michelle Rogers of Alexandria, who creates triptychs that incorporate musty old postcards and family photos with Rogers' own strange original pictures. The mix is confusingly familiar, and full of dolor - like a forgetful old man reviewing his life.
Genuinely disturbing are the pictures of Kathie Reinoehl of Richmond. This student artist appears to be documenting the terrible journey of a woman suffering from cancer. There are unsparing nude images of this emaciated, sick woman juxtaposed with the cold, mechanical equipment of her survival.
Even the freshest pictures in the show - underwater pool portraits by another student entrant, Stephen Salpukas of Mattaponi, Va. - are sobering metaphors for the human condition. The implication: We are strangers in a strange land, and we'd like to get back to the womb, please.
The juror for ``Light Images '96'' was Alison Devine Nordstrom, director and senior curator of the Southeast Museum of Photography at Daytona Beach Community College in Florida. From 110 entrants, she selected a small body of work by six professional and three student artists.
The show was open to all photographers living in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Washington, D.C. It's worth noting that Nordstrom chose six women to three men - usually, the tally is the reverse.
Aside from a general continuity of mood, the show is stylistically diverse.
Richmond photographer Jennifer Watson's straightforward pictures of a sad, empty Norfolk Southern warehouse recall the work of such great documentary photography as Walker Evans.
Meanwhile, Susan Bidwell of Huddleston, Va., has made artful, handsomely lit closeup photos of a roll of paper coming uncoiled. Edward Weston's 1930s abstracts come to mind.
Likewise, Duane Michals' vague photo narratives with figural blurs must be considered when viewing the pinhole photo series by Penny Harris of Baltimore.
Harris' ``Domestic Landscape Series'' is filmic, with recurring characters - presumably, all from the family. This is marvelous work, suggesting a novel's bounty in domestic drama.
Rather than histrionic, Harris captures quiet, inner anxieties. She suggests seething, unspoken, unresolvable tensions. A family that is alone together.
Harris uses well the inherent traits of pinhole - a central focus, a long exposure allowing for movement of figures that creates blur, and a black background.
A catalog for the show sells for $5 in the gift shop.
Vermont photographer Luke Powell, in his ``Afghan Folio'' shot throughout Afghanistan in the 1970s, appears to be half artist and half historian-anthropologist.
The 32 color images from that series are on view this month at the Hermitage Foundation Museum in Norfolk.
Both his subject and his dye transfer printing method are very rare. The dye transfer technique is difficult, requiring many painstaking steps. But it results in a very permanent color image marked by exquisite nuance of hue.
Sadly, Powell points out in the exhibit, Kodak has stopped manufacturing the materials necessary for making dye transfer prints. Meanwhile, the majority of color prints that have been produced in America in recent decades will eventually fade away.
Any technical-minded photographer would recognize in Powell's prints a great accomplishment as to color. Not that color has been overused, by shooting only the splashiest, brightest scenes. Instead, Powell wisely opted to convey mood by making creative choices. Often, his photos marvel at how this arid land abruptly changes from a vast, sand-colored expanse to rich green mountain pastures.
Powell's eye is sometimes poetic. His print titled ``Light and Water,'' shot in December 1974 in Herat, transforms an everyday water storage house into a mysterious, formally beautiful fairy tale scene. Backlit children toting buckets approach the water pit, where two ducks are silhouetted in a pool of sunlight.
More often, Powell seems bent on photo-illustrating a point he wants to make about the land, the times, the people.
In an April 1978 photo, men appear to relax at the entrance to the mosque at Gazergah near Herat. Text accompanies each image, and here Powell informs us that the mosque was built as a shrine to a saint who died in 1088 and was fond of cats. He notes also that at that time, in the 11th century, the nearby city of Herat was a major artistic center, with a population five times that of London or Paris.
By the time a visitor peruses and reads the exhibit, you have absorbed the idea that Afghanistan is a beautiful, ancient nation with a grand past. You are impressed by the sensuously undulating mountains looming like gods over the teeny-weeny villagers below.
At his best, Powell informs about the culture, while creating an arresting image. An example is ``Ladies of Kandahar,'' a closeup portrait of two women in downtown Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city. The women wear veils, completely obscuring face and hair.
The women see and speak through a fiber grate. They don't even look human. To an American woman, the image is distressing. Yet, in the text, Powell claims he has attempted to suspend judgment, especially in light of America's record of violence toward women.
Too often, Powell sets his images at a far distance. He favors the long lens and the wide view, positioning man as a wee player in a vast landscape.
It's gratifying to encounter such a sensitive traveler-recorder, who retreats at the first hint of displeasure from his subjects. But the result is, by not getting closer more often, by not engaging more intensely with the populace, the body of work feels somewhat disassociated.
Powell has exhibited in galleries and museums across the country. He has a master's degree in religion from Yale, where he focused on the history of the ancient Near East. After two years at Yale, he traveled to Israel for an excavation, and ended up touring Afghanistan. Later, he returned numerous times with a camera. The works in Norfolk date from 1974 to 1978. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
``Current Reflections No. 3'' by Stephen Salpukas: a sobering
metaphor for the human condition.
Graphic
ART REVIEWS
What: Light Images '96
Where: The Chrysler Museum of Art, 245 W. Olney Road, Norfolk
When: Through Dec. 1
Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m.
Sunday.
How much: $4, $2 for students and seniors, free to ages 5 and
younger.
Call: 664-6200
What: ``The Afghan Folio: Photographs by Luke Powell''
Where: Hermitage Foundation Museum, 7637 North Shore Road,
Norfolk
When: Through Sept. 29
Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m.
Sunday.
How much: Free admission for gallery
Call: 423-2052 by CNB