A TESTAMENT TO PROGRESS >> Austrian photographer Ernst Haas remarked that the “limitations of photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.” “Onward,” the annual juried exhibition currently on view at Project Basho, is evidence that the limitations suggested by Haas are expanding rapidly as more and more artists find themselves drawn to the camera.
David Lambert, 1/27/08 4:39 pm
Dedicated to providing exposure to new and emerging photographers without current gallery affiliation, the third run of “Onward” is a testament to the progress made in widening the medium’s scope in recent decades and a continued affirmation of the importance of its more traditional aesthetic qualities for artistic production and expression.
Rafael Soldi, Bajo Tu Manto
In large part, the show is a small portal into emerging American photography, and it displays much promise. For a town like Philadelphia, whose artistic identity of late is strongly tied to photography, the show is a great resource: The local art community can look critically at a small sampling of emerging photographic practice from around the country. Plus, “Onward” suggests who — and what — is inspiring new photographers today, and I like what I see: sophisticated, up-to-date photographic vocabulary, high standards of technical execution, and (with a few exceptions) professional presentation.
This year’s juror for “Onward” is Debbie Fleming Caffery, a documentary photographer whose evocative black-and-white images have captured the culture of her native Louisiana, as well as Portugal and Mexico, with a unique and carefully located artistic vision. Caffery is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, and her work resides in the collections of many well-known institutions, including MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Judging by the variety of work in the show, she was a very good choice — the judicious balancing act of her selections illustrates a respect for the diversity of photography as it is practiced today. This year’s call produced 1,666 entries by 418 artists, and the selection process yielded 73 works by 40 artists, with all but one hailing from the United States (one entry was from Dubai).
If there is one noticeable consistency in the selections this year, it’s that they all appear very reserved; there is nothing in the show that might qualify as “transgressive” or “radical” in portrayal or conceptual message. Whether this is the result of the submissions themselves or the choices of the juror, an introspective and restrained presence pervades much of the work in the show.
Inka Resch, Anonymous Specs 1744
One of the strengths of the exhibition is the choice to include two or more works of each selected artist, even at the expense of less overall exposure for those who entered work this year. Being able to absorb more than one work by each artist provides a sense that there is a real “group” on view, as opposed to a sweeping display of single works that can often end up lessening the impact of the exhibition’s artistic voices.
Curating an open-call show is no easy feat, especially when a juror’s selections are negotiated into an existing and finite space, and this task was left to the staff at Project Basho. Overall they have done excellent work; the work flows well, with only one or two pieces placed awkwardly at a particular location because of a need for them to read well from a certain distance or because of issues of scale.
Aside from a small cluster of works at the entrance to the darkroom/project space, the work is arranged within two distinct areas: the long hallway and the open back room that houses most of the larger works in the exhibition. Interestingly, the effect of moving through the space at Project Basho is akin to traveling through two distinct modes of photographic practice — what might be described as image “takers” and image “makers” (to use the title of a recent book by Anne Celine Jaeger).
Lou Outlaw, Jubilation! (As Obama takes Oath of Office)
The images in the hallway focus largely on the capture of the visible through photographic “seeing,” and almost all are in black-and-white. They range from documentary-style images, such as Lou Outlaw’s moving shot of a woman’s emotional response at President Obama’s inauguration, portraits that play with the language of light, focus, framing and depth of field and the “decisive moment,” to images that locate photographic artistry in the quotidian world of urban and rural life. Almost all of these artists seem to share an interest in preserving the merits of photography’s traditional aesthetics, and by the standards one expects from new and emerging photography they do it well. (An unintended, but serendipitous, effect is that you pass by trays of darkroom chemicals before entering the hallway, the olfactory trace lingering as you move down the passage).
Viktoria Sorochinski, Untitled 14 from “Land of No Return”
Entering the back room is largely a move from “taking” to “making,” and you can feel the shift not only in the emergence of bold color but also in the diversity of easily recognizable contemporary photographic trends. Deadpan portraits, digitally manipulated landscapes, extreme close-ups and tableaux-style work are clustered together on all four walls. A number of notable standouts in the show exhibit artistic maturity and a sense of resolution between inspiration, intention and product. David Lambert’s vistas come to life from a beautiful marriage of miniature landscapes fabricated from hobby materials and an adroit use of lighting, and he succeeds in conjuring up believable, yet fantastic, realities through photographic transformation. Alison Slein’s juxtapositions of carnivalesque silhouettes against sunsets and sunrises are richly colorful, yet spooky, experiences of crepuscular dreams; her process plays with tensions between dimensions and vision in photography. Portraits by Katrina D’Autremont and Viktoria Sorochinski force compelling formal and subjective relationships between the ages, poses and gazes of their sitters. The subtle visions of the overlooked moments of life by Jennifer Wilkey and Gwen Johnson hold up very well, even next to their more active neighbors in the room, and transport the viewer vicariously into their individual and contemplative lives and worlds.
A portion of the work at Basho suggests photographic pastiche. Names such as Andreas Gursky, Anna Gaskell, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Gregory Crewdson, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sally Mann, Jessica Todd Harper, Imogen Cunningham, etc., all easily leap to mind before a number of the works in the show. But that itself isn’t all bad in the context of an exhibition like “Onward” (and they are good names). In fact, it is inspiring to observe emerging artists conceptualizing photographic ideas and attempting to break new visual ground with both the most up-to-date and time-tested of sources. As emerging photography, it is expected that a number of inclusions might evidence an ongoing intense engagement and dialogue with existing photographic examples as part of a process of finding artistic self-definition. All of these examples in the show are, nevertheless, already on very solid artistic ground.
Finding a niche where a hitherto unseen photographic “look” or a clever strategy of negotiation yields provocative and unexpected results has been a common practice within photography in recent decades, and it has led to the commercial success of many photographers. Perhaps we will see more and more emerging photographers look to individualized modes of production and imagery within the range of recent practice as a point of departure, rather than feel the anxiety and pressures of marching to the beat of “new and different.” If so, there may be a growing need to revise and reconsider how we judge artistic identity and merit with regard to the aesthetics of photography as we move forward from the new, wide base of contemporary practice.
Jennifer Wilkey, Day 47
In general, we are just now starting to confront the effects of artistic production that has been reared in a fully conceived postmodern program. This place of no supposed styles, no schools (unless self-defined), and no particular way art is supposed to look — what Arthur Danto refers to as “aesthetic entropy” (and he is receiving significant heat for his idea of Post-Historical art in recent issues of The New Yorker) — may suggest a new developmental pattern based on photographic “older siblings.” Looking to postmodern photographers’ individual artistic characteristics in order to focus one’s approach toward self-definition within an open and under-defined artistic culture makes sense as a strategy and might become more common.
If thought of this way, it certainly explains the visible presence of such strong specific influences in a good deal of the imagery in “Onward.” This portion of work in the show holds up well despite its referential qualities, and it also exhibits something else present in much of the work in the back room: a noticeable balance of form and concept. That’s a good sign for photography’s future, and perhaps the scales are tipping back a bit from a heavy-handed conceptual base now that high-quality printing and cameras are becoming more accessible to the larger community of emerging photographers (possibly due in part to innovative photography centers around the country like Project Basho and PPAC in Philadelphia).
Sarah Marie Land, Lilley
One of the laudable aspects of Project Basho’s annual exhibition is that it reveals a churning engine of creativity at work outside of commercial art galleries and other institutional venues, and functions as a single, small piece of evidence that there is a bottleneck between a surplus of artistic production and the very narrow and selective world of those able to gain commercial representation.
Juried shows like these offer exposure to hard-working and creative individuals with talent and potential, while also providing an opportunity to evaluate the standards of a juror or jury that has experience in the current culture of art. Both can be enlightening, for the artists who receive criticism and the viewers who can view their work and observe, reconsider and critique the nature and future directions of one segment of the art world. Shows like “Onward” provide an important bridge between two artistic precincts normally separated by a series of complicated factors. Whether these types of exhibitions result in fulfilling, inspiring, troubling, enlightening or disappointing shows should not be the only gauge of their success. We need shows like these.
This year “Onward” set out to jury the work of emerging photographers and succeeded in its task. And with a new juror each year, the ongoing endeavor by Project Basho maintains a necessary variable in the selection process. The work in “Onward” 2010 made me curious to see and know more about many of the emerging photographers in the show, which compelled me to locate and navigate through their individual Web sites. I am sure others will, too. Isn’t that the point?
Source: Philadelphia CityPaper
