Photographer Richard Misrach's photo of a rare sand dune surrounded by water in the Carson Sink in Nevada
By Rebecca Burch
For the Gazette
'I don't go looking for twisty and sprawling images, but I find them. I guess it suits my personality. When there's not much water available, plants will fight to grow and all hell breaks loose. I like that."
The quote above is the perfect metaphor for the "In Response to Place," photo exhibit at the Clay Center. The artists featured captured images from the Nature Conservancy's "Last Great Places" list - a list of natural places threatened by development, pollution, and urban sprawl. Like Friedlander's plants, these places are fighting to exist, and these artists have captured their struggle with stunning results.
Some of the them, like Annie Liebovitz, William Wegman, and Sally Mann, are best known for their portraiture. A fan might be surprised to see their names in an exhibit of landscape photos. In fact, their photos of nature take on an almost portrait-like quality. Liebovitz's “Pitch Pines and Gray Birch” shows a grouping of almost human-looking, light-colored birch trees against the dark, velvety backdrop of pitch pines.
Fans of Wegman will be happy to see his famous Weimaraners in his landscapes. But instead of his typical anthropomorphic portraits of dogs in human poses, the dogs become part of the landscape itself. In “Bay,” you see only the dog's back, forming a concave sort of "dogscape" against the background of a portion of Cobscook Bay, Maine.
Some artists did include people as a metaphor for the struggle of the land they call home. Artist Fazal Sheikh's portrait of Dona Antonia captures the strength of a Brazilian woman, smiling and enjoying a beautiful flower, although she is a member of a community of landless subsistence farmers, and has a crippled foot. His stark use of contrast makes her stand out in the portrait, almost like a religious figure.
Mary Ellen Mark uses a slightly different approach in her portraits from Priblof Islands, Alaska, and Virginia's Eastern Shore. “Lillie St. Lister” is a tender portrait of a grandmotherly African-American woman sitting in church, looking prim and proper in her delicate woven hat and Sunday dress. In the context of this exhibit, the woman and church become the landscape, possibly a statement about how interconnected people -- and our beliefs -- are to the places in which we live.
Lynn Davis and Richard Misrach introduce bold color with extra-large, chromographic photos of sculptural formations of sand and rock. The Davis diptych “Wilson's Arch, Highway 191, Utah,” show arches of stone that look like they could very well be Richard Serra scuptures. Their angular twists of stone and the stark contrast of light and shadow grab your attention and pull you across the room.
The same is true for Misrach's enormous, surreal-looking “Battleground Point #25,” which shows a rare glimpse of a sand dune surrounded by water at Carson Sink, Nevada - an event that happens once every 12 years or so. These photos are simply breathtaking, and because of their size, you almost feel like you're standing in the scene, instead of looking at a photo on a wall.
If this exhibit sounds like a feast for the eyes, then perhaps the Island of Rinja Teluk Lehokuwadadasami, Komodo National Park, Selat Sumba, Indonesia by Hope Sandrow should be considered dessert. Appropriately, it is located at the very end of the exhibit.
Sandrow has taken 5 huge, color digital prints of the island, viewing it from both below and above the water at the same time, and has put them together to create an enormous, wall-sized installation in mouth-watering, eye-pleasing, jump-off-the-wall color. You can see living things both under the water and on the island: fish swimming in the blue sea, vegetation growing on the outcropping of rock and sand, the lapping of waves against the camera lens, and the glow of sunlight filtering through the tropical atmosphere. Such an amazing tribute to one of the most gorgeous Last Great Places on this planet!
The only downside to this exhibit is that there wasn't more of it. Many artists in this exhibit had only one or two pieces and it would have been nice to see how they would treat other natural subject matter - especially the artists who aren't well-known for landscape work.
Fans of William Wegman will be happy to see his "dogscape" in the exhibit.
IF YOU GO: “In Response to Place,” part of a larger exhibit that opened in 2001 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., will be on view at the Clay Center until Nov. 5