Trustman Art Gallery, Simmons Gallery, Main Building
300 The Fenway, Fourth Floor
Boston
Through May 28
Curated by Stephen Halpert of the university of New England
Art Gallery in Portland, Maine, this traveling exhibition has
been whittled down to fit the trustman Gallery’s space. Yet,
even with fewer examples of the 24 photographers’ work, it’s
a big show.
Think of black and white, which
is the spare color range most of
us are familiar with in traditional
photography, then think of black
and white tugged and teased,
darkened and lightened until a family
of secondary tones fills each still
life, portrait or landscape with an
abundance of nuance.
This much nuance reads more like
a paragraph than a one-liner and,
consequently, for an adequate
“reading” this viewer felt the need
for both a good vantage point
and a good chair — maybe a wellupholstered
Victorian rocker.
The antique processes used by the
crafty artists showcased here arrived
with a splash through the long,
circuitous history of photography:
ambrotypes, cyanotypes, tintypes,
calotypes, etc. Google will find them
for you, define them, explain why each
failed to achieve lasting popularity
and, if you aren’t discouraged by the
expense, painstaking detail and sheer
impracticality, give you step by step
by step-by-step recipes. Good luck!
Most people, with good reason, are
discouraged. Others, with equally
good reason, have persisted. One of
the persistent is David Strasburger and one of the fruits of his persistence
is in this exhibition: “Spring Snow,” a
gold-toned rallitype.
The play of light in “Spring Snow”
reminds one more of a painting than
a snapshot. The gleam of a white
porcelain teapot anchors the left
foreground, while an upright roll
of paper towels glimmers in dark
counterpoint. In the right background,
the spring snow seen through a double
window behind a soapstone sink is a
diaphanous veil against a spare scene
of trees and a barn.
For the rest, there’s the usual detail
of kitchen paraphernalia framing this
transient, eternal scene, but no clutter.
Each volume exists in a fascinating
stasis of light and dark just about to
change; self-composed within the larger
composition, they echo the volatility
of the weather outside, reflecting and
absorbing its changeable light.
Keliy Anderson-Staley works the same
magic with a modern studio interior
in Queens, New York — probably hers.
It’s a pedestrian scene of necessary
order with like materials stored in
plastic tubs or shelved in neat piles.
But, again, the tango of light and dark
within the larger composition lends
liveliness to this scene, which echoes here not the weather, but the mind of
the artist, ever alert for new symbolic
forms to pour itself artfully into.
Bev Conway creates portraits with
the chemicals and mechanics of
the ambrotype process. “Caitlin”
and “Nate” have a spare, casual
modernity about them, but their final
sum eludes a quick glance. They are compositions of light and dark as
ineffable as
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