Manifold Destiny

John Vettese sees what develops

by John Vettese

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Published: Oct 21, 2009

If the raison d'être of staggered exhibitions is giving arts scenes the space and time to gestate ideas, Woodmere Art Museum's Third Triennial of Contemporary Photography surveys the fruits of that growth in a comprehensive arc.

Alongside Zoe Strauss' haunting photos from a recent excursion to Alaska sit John Dowell's curiously reflexive metropolitan cityscapes (City Hall, pictured, detail). Documentarian Ron Tarver dabbles in digital abstracts with a celestial feel, while Andrea Modica shows traditional nudes posing with puzzling props like dead birds and dried fish.

"It's a show of contrasts," says curator Stephen Perloff, editor of The Photo Review. "It's not just portraits, not just landscapes, not just computer-manipulated images. These are photographers employing a broad range of tools."

The profile of the eight artists is equally broad. Perloff said his curatorial M.O. followed the Woodmere Triennial's usual path — one master photographer from greater Philly (in the past, Ray Metzker and Larry Fink), shown alongside a mix of established names and emerging artists.

In this case, the master is Emmet Gowin, whose 1996 series "Changing the Earth" receives its first local exhibit. The 16 images mix aerial and on-the-ground perspectives of Nevada nuclear test sites in Yucca Lake, Yucca Flat and Frenchman Flat. Perloff calls the series "even more eco-conscious at the moment than in some past times." The traditional silver prints study a barren landscape pockmarked with craters. Diagnostic Array hammers home their ridiculous size; shot from a plane, it shows buildings surrounded by several holes large enough to swallow all of them. Other shots focus on the craters individually. Sedan Crater, framed and shaded by a setting sun, looks positively lunar, but the desolation is not natural.

Tarver's experimental series "World in a Grain of Sand" is also composed of images that appear celestial but are in fact man-made. This body of work is something of a departure for the Inquirer photographer and social documentarian. It appears at first that the images were shot telescopically — we see tiny points of light against a black backdrop, the bright reds and blues of thermal imaging, flashes that look like solar flares. In fact, these are ad-hoc objects arranged on a scanner; Tarver's capability of using this technique to evoke otherworldly scenes is stellar.

Strauss' Alaska series continues the momentum of her America book in the country's remote northwestern wilds. She still focuses on droll road signs and judicious open space, as well as the endearing misfits who inhabit it. What's fascinating is seeing Strauss at play with such a reduced color palette — most of the snow-covered images are white, blue and gray, and this reduction in visual cues makes her perspective all the more potent.

These very rural scenes seem like an odd match when hung alongside Dowell's metropolises, but in a way, his work is equally stark. One quickly notices that, like Strauss' empty landscapes, these seemingly commonplace nighttime skylines of Philadelphia and Chicago are devoid of life. But thousands of people live and work here — there must be some inhabitants. So we begin to comb each large-scale print, building to building and window to window, until a creeping sensation of voyeurism strikes with a recoil; we're looking into people's apartment windows, searching through their office desks. Perfloff laughs when I mention this, suggesting that this effect may not have been intentional. Since the images are taken at night, the exposures are longer and people, in constant motion, are not captured.

Perloff describes the curating experience as research-intensive and collaborative, since he made site visits to artists' studios and shared ideas about how to best show their work. Strauss wanted 14 of her Alaska images hung in a horizontal suite; the rest, she said, could be shown however Perloff saw fit. Since Woodmere's mission is to exclusively showcase regional artists, this gave the curator a unique opportunity to narrow his focus from the broader international scene he studies in The Photo Review to his own backyard, a region he sees photographically thriving.

"More places are showing photography and more photographers are staying in the city," he observes. "That's a major difference from a couple decades ago." It bodes well for continued growth between now and Woodmere's next triennial.

(john.vettese@citypaper.net)

Through Jan. 3, 2010, Woodmere Art Museum, 9201 Germantown Ave., 215-247-0476, woodmereartmuseum.org. View more Triennial images at citypaper.net/arts.

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