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Leah Sobsey - Natural Magic, Words of Light: Cyanotypes
January 8 - 29, 2012
The Horace Williams House, 610 East Rosemary Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27514
Tuesday - Friday 10am - 4pm + Sundays 1 - 4pm

Leah Sobsey's beautiful exhibition of tea-toned cyanotypes in various shades of inky blue and black, pale fleshy pink and sepia, tan and chocolate of organic matter - a bird's nest full of speckled eggs, animal bones, plants and moths - are not made in the tradition of botanist Anna Atkins'  blue contact prints of algae, plants, and flowers. Sobsey photographs her subject matter and then converts the image into a large-scale digital negative, prints it as a cyanotype in the sun, and tones them in tea. This provides an uncanny viewing experience as the scale of a bird's egg and moth is the same as an animal's jawbone and delicately flowering plant. Through the presentation of many images in grid-formation and the manipulation of scale, Sobsey works towards a more scientific or taxonomic approach. Rather than ghostly and abstract white shadows of the real things, Sobsey represents each object with extreme photographic detail that is then rendered poetic through the cyanotype and tea-toning process.

The most powerful photograph in the show is the one of a field of indigo blue in which two pale pink moths hover. They are not pinned down but they are still, unable to fly. Oriented vertically on the paper, one on top of the other, they seem to want to ascend but they are forever held in a bath of hovering and smudged blue. (The blue holds variation in the surface due to hand-applying the light-sensitive chemicals on the paper.) This

This new body of work, Natural Magic, Words of Light, evolved out of a month- long stay at the Grand Canyon as the National Parks 2010 Artist In Residence. Sobsey studied and photographed specimens in the Grand Canyon Museum Collection from the earliest days of collecting at the park (1920’s) to the present. Sobsey writes in her artist statement, "Different from Bernd and Hilla Becher's "cataloging” and Anna Atkins “direct documentation,” I work at the intersection of science, art and wonder, and the exploration of photographic historical processes intertwined with digital technology. I'm interested in the bridging of history, both technologically and metaphorically, as a way to connect to the present and explore process as a concept and metaphor."

I imagine these magical images of desert and canyon specimens to be an archive of: things that may soon disappear due to uranium mining or climate change; organic matter that will eventually decay; specimens chosen by the artist for their bone beauty and fragile existence; the shift from 1800s technology through the century of every kind of photograph up to our digital era. Sobsey's archive makes us want to observe the natural world more closely and to preserve it, however that futile that effort may seem.






 

One of the topics 8x10 portrait photographer Judith Joy Ross is photographing continues to be protest. Rather than the anti-war protesters she photographed in her small, accessible booklet, "Protest The War", the subjects in part of her current show at Pace are environmental activists, who are speaking out, among other things, about the dangerous practice of fracking to drill for natural gas in her area. A previous post here listed the show, but a recent discussion with the artist highlighted just how deeply personal this issue is for her. The 65-year old photographer frequently sets out these days, view camera, Tom Tom and "Frack is Wack" button in tow to various Occupy camps and protests staged in Pennsyvania and in New Jersey. She photographs them in meetings, in lines, phonebanking. A photograph made at the end of a rally crossing train tracks and another made of sparsely-staged protestors with signs along a roadside both recall the also civic series, "RFK Funeral Train" by Paul Fusco. She follows closely activists involved in trying to stop the practice of fracking, a way to release natural gas from shale deposits in her area, and beyond. The drilling causes, among other things, polluted byproducts to contaminate local water supply, which was famously shown to ignite in citizens' kitchen and bathroom faucets in the 2010 documentary film, "Gas Land", by Josh Fox. If you haven't seen it, then you should. The very recent earthquakes in Ohio are being blamed on the practice, which should be a huge wake-up call to everyone. As if October snowstorms and January days at 61 degrees (Hello 2012!) are not enough to rouse us to the dangers of over-exploiting the earth, perhaps the ground rumbling below will knock us to our senses. Ross, however, needs no shaking up; she is already so dedicated to her cause that she is driven obsessively to be one voice speaking for many. Her activism lies in the photography of those people she believes in, so that we may see the pictures and be roused to action.

Through January 28, 2012 at Pace MacGill on 57th St.

www.pacemacgill.com

http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/

For another post that includes details of the local issues in Pennsylvania, see here: http://armenphotography.blogspot.com/2011/12/judith-joy-ross-recent-work...

And if you are in Cologne, be sure to see Ross's retrospective through February 5th: http://www.blossfeldt.info/wEnglish/photosammlung/index.php

In 2004, New York photographer Richard Rothman traveled west with a 4 x 5 camera to explore the remaining fragments of ancient old-growth forests in Northern California. Unexpectedly, he developed an interest in the neighboring town of Crescent City. Rothman was affected by the town's disposable architecture, its emotional tenor, its political and religious culture, and the relationship that the townspeople had with the corralled forest to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. The body of work, made over a five-year period, is gathered together in Rothman's first book, Redwood Saw, and combines photographs of the spectacularly ornate forest environment with the disposable landscape of the town and portraits of Cresecent City residents. 

"For me," Rothman says, "the subject of Redwood Saw transceneded the specifics of the town of Crescent City. I saw it as a local story, fascinating in all its specificity, but also a global story. That is one of the essential tasks of photography: to recognize those salient facts which can become a vehicle for metaphor." Rothman's exploration of the themes of longing and unhappiness, reflected in the faces and bodies of the townspeople, suggest our underlying and universal human predicament. 

--Nazraeli Press

Rothman's photographs may be viewed on his website at http://www.richardrothman.com/

To obtain more information or order a copy of the book, visit http://www.nazraeli.com/

Durham, North Carolina photograher and educator MJ Sharp spends her time looking at what most of us do not consider. Working beneath the night sky and within existing lighting conditions, she summons an articulation of light and atmosphere that only film and a patient, careful observer can muster. Luckily, a collection of her works is on view (through January 28th) at Craven Allen Gallery in Durham, NC. Craven Allen Gallery is located at 1106 1/2 Broad Street, Durham, NC, 27705. The gallery is open from 9:30-6pm Monday-Friday and from 10-4 Saturday. Sharp will give an artist talk and create an exposure at the gallery on Tuesday, January 17 from 5-7pm. 

If you happen to be in the area, it would be a smart idea to kick off the new year by taking a look at this exhibition. 

For more information, go to http://mjsharp.com/LightCache.html

In Peekskill, artist Melina Hunt, who has spearheaded a major art and access project for Hart Island, is having an exhibition of her photos and drawings memorializing some of those buried in NYC's Potter's Field. Catch it before it c loses soon. “The Hart Island Project: Shades of New York” runs through Jan. 14 in the Westchester Gallery at Westchester Community College’s Center for the Digital Arts, Peekskill Extension, 27 North Division Street, Peekskill. Open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Information: sunywcc.edu/peekskill or (914) 606-7304. For more information about the Hart Island Project: hartisland.net.