Planes of Light: Photographs and Spatial Borders

SEPTEMBER 19 – NOVEMBER 11, 2023

In the most fundamental way photographs record the spatial organization of objects or shapes on paper. We learn to read spatial cues such as perspective, depth, volume, line and color from our infancy. The overriding majority of photographs present objective records of the people, place and objects that a photographer encounters. The photographs often become ‘shared’ experiences in the sense that we have the collective ability to understand or decode the information contained. As the medium of photography has expanded some photographers have distilled their compositions to allow the physical organization of space to be the subject of the image itself. They construct photographs in which shapes, colors and geometric forms are the focus of their work.

In the most fundamental way photographs record the spatial organization of objects or shapes on paper. We learn to read spatial cues such as perspective, depth, volume, line and color from our infancy. The overriding majority of photographs present objective records of the people, place and objects that a photographer encounters. The photographs often become ‘shared’ experiences in the sense that we have the collective ability to understand or decode the information contained. As the medium of photography has expanded some photographers have distilled their compositions to allow the physical organization of space to be the subject of the image itself. They construct photographs in which shapes, colors and geometric forms are the focus of their work.

In the photographs of Jan Groover, table tops are populated with bottles and forms with rich colors casting shadows. Her depth of field is kept shallow. The surfaces gently set up a harmonics of color in which the shapes present basic geometric forms. The overall focus of the pictures is on the planes of color and shapes that comprise the photographs.

In the cameraless photographs of Garry Fabian Miller the chromatics of light and color are celebrated and explored within the confines of the photographic emulsion. His pictures are built from the basic shapes of circles, squares, rectangles, and ellipses. The artist carefully masks out areas of Cibachrome film and subjects them to light projected through liquids or colored glass onto the emulsion and builds images in which the photographs record the interaction of light, color and time. Although Fabian Miller claims that his pictures are based on observable phenomena, this body of work presents itself without reference to actual objects.

The concept of using the variables of dark and light and basing photographic images on natural shapes is not a recent development. In the early photographs of Edward Weston, the shapes of shells and peppers (among other objects) are set against neutral backgrounds and presented with formal elegance. His aesthetic cleaves to the ‘less is more’ dictum. His care in paring down content in his photographs to their essentials is impactful. His son, Brett, distilled the landscape of the Dunes of Oceana into studies of light and form in which the sandscapes are abstracted into undulations of curvilinear spaces. The tonal modulations within the pictures often run the spectrum from black to white and often create abstractions that look dimensional.

The later work of Bill Brandt is dynamically charged. The photographs are purposely printed in high contrast, unlike the earlier prints that were less dense. Falling under the influences of Man Ray and Surrealism he created landscapes, nudes, and cityscapes that were graphic and expressionistic. Bodies, streets, rainswept roofs, tunnels, trains and other phenomena were treated as saturated areas of light and dark. The photographs often have a dark and foreboding aspect – reflecting the menacing times in London during the war in which they were taken.

This exhibition is designed to be broad and eclectic. It is about the ability of photography to specifically sidestep the function of presenting life as we see it and to distill – from nature or observable phenomena – the basic components of shape, line and color. The intent of the various photographers is to concentrate their energies not only on what we see, but also on the basics of how we see. The photographs are not mimetic of the world at large , but are statements themselves that are the result of how various photographers choose to present light, space, color and line.