MARYLAND ART PLACE //
2011 CURATORS’ INCUBATOR
February 3 - March 19, 2011
Curator
Nate Larson
Artists
Adam Ekberg
Peter Happel Christian
John Mann
Libby Rowe
Christian Shank
Michael Sherwin
Marni Shindelman
small
gic
:: Photographic Transformations
2
John Mann, Unitited
(Moskva), 2009, Chromogenic Print, 36˝ x 30˝
Small Magic: Photographic Transformations examines the
connections between seven contemporary artists working with physical materials on
a small scale to thoughtfully construct sets as a staging ground for photographic images.
The resulting photographs and video works transform the ordinary through this process
of construction, intervention, and fabrication to suggest new and inventive ways of
understanding our perceptions of the world. This exhibition asks us to reconsider the
small spaces, to cultivate a renewed sense of the playfulness of materials, and to uncover
the magic in our daily lives.
3
Since the origins of photography, there has been tension between factual recording of
the world and fictive approaches to staging objects and people for the benefit of the
camera. Photography first came to widespread public attention around 1839. The early
practitioners of the medium, such as Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot, regarded the
act of photography as a purely factual endeavor without undue influence by the photographer. Talbot discusses this in the introductory remarks to his 1844 book of photographs
The Pencil of Nature:
They are impressed by Nature’s hand; and what they want as yet of delicacy and finish
of execution arises chiefly from our want of sufficient knowledge of her laws. When
we have learnt more, by experience, respecting the formation of such pictures, they
will doubtless be brought much nearer to perfection; and though we may not be able
to conjecture with any certainty what rank they may hereafter attain to as pictorial
productions, they will surely find their own sphere of utility, both for completeness of
detail and correctness of perspective.1
The language that Talbot uses distances the photographer from the equation. He notes
that the images have not been manipulated by hand, pointing to the allegedly pure state
of representation enabled by the camera technology. To Talbot and his contemporaries,
the photographer did not shape the image, rather, as the title of the book suggests, the
camera was the pencil of nature, permitting the natural world to represent itself. Perhaps
this understanding comes from the scientific background of Talbot and other early practitioners, thinking of the photograph simply as a precision tool to create scientific records.
1. Fox Talbot, William Henry. The Pencil of Nature. Chicago: KWS Publishers, 2009.
4
In sharp contrast to this working philosophy, photographers also began manipulating
their images for dramatic effect and with technical innovation, marking a shift from a
scientific document to a mode of artistic expression. Oscar Gustave Rejlander broke
new ground with his 1857 photograph The Two Ways of Life, depicting an interior scene
filled with people. A God figure stands divisively in the middle of the composition with
a drunken debauchery of sinners on the left and the faithful and pious believers on the
right. This strongly moralistic image appears to be a straight photograph but is actually composed of thirty-two individual images, combined in the darkroom to create the
new and seamless narrative tableau. Rejlander’s intent to create a morality lesson for the
viewer pushes the photograph further away from a pure recording of the natural world
and into the allegorical expression of art.
Historical manipulation of the photographic image is also more subtle, drawing on sets
and stages, rather than darkroom alchemy. Julia Margaret Cameron began photographing
around 1864, twenty years after the publication of Talbot’s book. Cameron disregarded
the link of the photograph to the actual by staging her friends and family members in
representations of mythological characters, such as Lancelot and Guinevere. These
portraits disregard the link to the historical factuality, in favor of a looser document, one
that perpetuates the mythology but disregards the link to the factual historical record.
Cameron drew visual inspiration from the oil paintings of the time and thought of her
photographs as art on the same level as painting. This manner of working set in motion
a pendulum of representation within photography, swinging between strictly factual and
staged and constructed modes of working.
5
Michael Sherwin, Minor
Planets, 2009, 12 Pigment
Prints, 20˝ x 20˝ ea.
If photography has a central problem, it is the complicated relationship to the actual; the
subject in front of the lens at the moment of exposure. John Szarkowski, former Director
of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, discusses this relationship between the
photograph and “the thing itself” in his 1966 essay The Photographer’s Eye. Szarkowski
states that “the photographer has to learn that the factuality of his pictures, no matter
how convincing and inarguable, was a different thing than the reality itself” and then
goes on to clarify that “the subject and the picture were not the same thing, although
they would afterward seem so.”2 Szarkowski’s point is to the transformative property
of the photograph—the photograph transmutes and transforms the world through the
translation to a two-dimensional depiction.
The artists in Small Magic: Photographic Transformations highlight this issue in contemporary terms, and freely use the creation of sets and stages, illusions and constructions,
building scenes to be recorded and transformed by the camera. The exhibition is divided
into three approaches to this process of staging and construction: one that seamlessly
renders the illusion of a photographic reality, one in which a still life has been carefully
constructed and presented as a delicate tableau, and one in which the staging artifice is
decoded and revealed in the final work.
C hristine Shan k and M ich ael Sh erw in construct photographic illusions that
appear seamless under a quick look. Shank designs and constructs interior domestic
spaces that show the aftermath of a destructive event or the feverish inner world of
someone desperate to regain something lost. The disasters depicted in the images include a den overflowing with crumpled paper, waves of sand filling a living room, bricked
up passageways and car headlights spotlighting an abandoned mattress. Provocative
titles, such as The Attraction Was Unexpected and Couldn’t be Avoided, heighten the
visual tension of the charred remains of a bed frame and suggest the implosion of a
domestic relationship. The sets for Shank’s photographs are meticulously constructed
tabletop models, allowing the artist to carefully shape our perception of these domestic
spaces. This method of working allows the artist to carefully control every aspect of the
final scene, rather than shooting in an existing location that may have stray details or
unexpected inclusions.
2. Szarkowski, John. The Photographer’s Eye. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2007.
6
Christine Shank, The
Attraction Was Unexpected,
And Couldn’t Be Avoided,
Chromogenic Print, 2007,
24˝ x 30˝
Christine Shank, The Last
Fight, 2005, Chromogenic
Print, 24˝ x 30˝
Sherwin’s contributions to the exhibition appear to be simple photographs of planetary
bodies in the vast depths of space. One could imagine the collection of these images by
a science institute, using high-powered telescopes to cut through the depths of space in
retrieving this photographic data. They are hung in the exhibition space to enhance this
effect, clustered and grouped, as if to categorize and classify, or perhaps even to chart the
heavens. Rather than satellite photographs, closer examination reveals that they are in
fact small rocks, collected by the artist and his wife over a period of ten years. The series
points to the slippery nature of photography, ever dependent on a sense of context to
communicate factual information about the subject matter. In Sherwin’s Minor Planets,
this exercise in scale confounds our understanding of space and snaps the viewer from
the finite to the infinite.
7
First Row
Second Row
Third Row
John Mann, Untitled
(Ocean), 2009, Chromogenic Print, 36˝ x 30˝
Libby Rowe, Dust to Dust,
2008, Digital Chromogenic
Print, 22˝ x 28˝
Marni Shindelman,
National Velvet Trophy
Collection, 2010, Lambda
Print, 20˝ x 16˝
John Mann, Untitled
(Proposed On-Ramp),
2009, Chromogenic Print,
36˝ x 30˝
Libby Rowe, Seen But Not
Heard, 2008, Digital Chromogenic Print, 22˝ x 28˝
8
The second approach taken by the exhibition artists utilizes small-scale constructions
and presents them as strangely seductive still lives, as in the photographs of J o h n
M ann , Libby Ro w e , and M arni Sh indelman . Mann’s series Folded in Place
playfully explores dissected maps and atlases, suggesting new understandings of our
sense of place through the varied configurations. In photographs such as Libya, Mann
reconfigures the map with a piece of wire to examine the fluidity of national boundaries
in the political discourse. Mann’s constructions are carefully considered reconfigurations
that ask the viewer to examine these maps as if they were landscapes themselves, as
opposed to guides to direct us through the real world. In an age where we increasingly
rely on technology to direct our path through the world, Mann subverts these systems
of representing geography; gently reminding us how easily our representational models
can collapse.
Libby Rowe’s Dwellings confronts our dual understanding of negative psychological
dwelling against our positive sense of dwelling as a safe domestic space. To explore this
idea, Rowe constructs physical structures from fragile or ephemeral materials, such as
playing cards, dust, cloth, paper, and dirt. Through her use of materials, she hints at the
precarious nature of our everyday lives, pointing to the tension between our sense of
security and the possibility for disaster. This fragility is amplified by recent incidents in
homeland security and the knowledge of an unstable global climate. Her objects become
more than their humble materials, functioning as complex metaphors for emotional relationships and asks the viewer to reconsider their own points of security and vulnerability.
Collected stories and souvenirs of famous zoo animals inspire Marni Shindelman’s
photographic works. Her new series National Velvet Trophy Collection records plastic
toys of various animals, ranging from horses to emu to giraffes to mice, flocked with
a velvety material by hand and photographed against monochromatic backdrops. The
sensual nature of the material reveals the deep longing that we have to touch and
possess these animals, making them sensually soft and becoming a visual metaphor
for the longing of the public. The backgrounds of the photographs are of the same color
as the flocked animals, and the lack of separation between foreground and background
mirrors our inability to distinguish between our own desires and the animal as an
independent entity. Shindelman’s lush and richly saturated constructions seduce us with
their visual qualities even as they remind us of our own reimagining of wild animals as
coveted possessions.
9
The third approach is illuminated in the work of P eter Happel C h ristian and
Adam Ekberg . Happel Christian, under the guise of Second Sight Art Services,
enters public and private places and sweeps the floor to collect the particles, dust,
and strands of hair left behind in everyday life. The collected detritus is then contact
printed against a blue background, taking the appearance of a cloud against a deep
blue sky, and suggesting a connection between the ephemeral nature of the human
existence and the weather. The contact prints of shifting cloud formations are collected with the documentation of the gathering process in handmade artist books
titled Brief Notes on Existence. Happel Christian allows the viewer to enter an illusionary world in viewing the book, with the reveal in the final page of the book. The
final page of each book photographically documents the artist in the act of sweeping
and is authoritatively stamped with the dates and locations of the collection event.
Adam Ekberg creates a childlike sense of wonder in his photographic images, using
simple materials, such as light, mirrors, beer bottles, and mirror balls to transform
otherwise mundane everyday scenes. In Saturday Night, a small mirror ball perches
precariously on the lip of a longneck beer bottle, with a cocktail umbrella adorning
the top of the ball. A flashlight illuminates the mirror ball, casting dozens of reflected
highlights across the corner of a utilitarian room. The photograph longs for something more in humble circumstance and the materials are used in innovative ways
to transform both the objects and surroundings into a newly magical realm. Ekberg’s
video piece, A Disco Ball in the Woods, takes the viewer through a similar transformation, as a disco ball slowly rotates, casting reflections throughout a deserted
snow-covered forest at night. The viewer approaches the large-scale projection in
the gallery space the same way in which a hiker in the woods might inadvertently
discover the scene in the world.
The artists selected for Small Magic: Photographic Transformations use these varied
construction and fabrication methods to suggest analytical connections between
cultural events, the historical record, and the various systems of belief used to
explain the world around us. Each work takes a familiar reference point from our
own experiences, adjusting it ever so slightly, lending us a deeper insight into the
overlooked and forgotten. In an increasingly fast paced world, these artists ask the
viewer to slow down and consider the detail of materials, interpret suggestions of
narrative, and use the transformative power of the camera to uncover the magic on
the periphery of our daily lives.
10
Adam Ekberg, Saturday
Night, 2009, Archival Inkjet
Print, 40˝ x 30˝
Peter Happel Christian,
Details from Volume 18 National Weather Ser vice
Southern Arizona, 2005
– 2006, Handmade Artist
Book, 11˝ x 15˝
11
nate
adam
larson ekberg
Nate Larson is full time faculty in the
A dam E kber g received his MFA from
photography department at the Maryland
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Institute College of Art. As a practicing
in 2006. Adam’s work has been shown at
artist, his work with photographic media,
The Museum of Contemporary Photogra-
artist books and digital video have been
phy and The Museum of Contemporary
widely shown across the US and featured
Art and at galleries including Thomas
internationally in Canada, Russia, Hun-
Robertello Gallery in Chicago, Platform
gary, Australia, the Netherlands, Greece,
Gallery in Seattle, and an upcoming exhibi-
Belgium, the UK, and Spain. Numerous
tion at Fotografiska in Stockholm Sweden.
publications and media outlets have fea-
Adam is an assistant professor at Univer-
tured his projects, including NPR Market-
sity of South Florida.
place Tech Report, Art Papers, C Magazine,
http://adamekberg.com
Exposure, The Washington Post, The New
York Times, and Afterimage. His projects
have received grant support from the
Ultimate Eye Foundation, Visual Studies
Workshop, the Banff Centre, the City of
Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs,
and the Illinois Arts Council. He currently
serves on the National Board of Directors
of the Society for Photographic Education.
http://www.natelarson.com/
12
peter
happel john
mann
christian
P eter Happel Ch ristian earned
J o h n Mann was born in the American
a BFA from the University of Iowa in
East, raised in the Midwest, and schooled
1999 and an MFA from the University of
in the West. Upon graduation from the
Oregon in 2003 and has exhibited his work
University of New Mexico with an MFA
throughout the United States. His work is
in photography in 2002, he headed back
included in the permanent collections of
east to start the cycle all over again. He
the Tucson Museum of Art and the Center
now lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where he
for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona
makes images and teaches at Florida State
and in 2008 he received an Individual
University. His work has been exhibited
Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts
internationally, including such venues as
Council for Interdisciplinary/Performance
the Museum of Contemporary Art (Geor-
Art. Peter currently teaches photography
gia), Phillips de Pury (London), Jen Bekman
and integrated media at Saint Cloud State
Gallery (New York), Daniel Cooney Fine Art
University in Minnesota.
(New York), and the Center for Photogra-
http://peterhappelchristian.com/
phy at Woodstock (New York).
http://www.rockpapercloud.com/
13
libby
rowe
christine
shank
L ibby Rowe holds a Master of Fine
Ch ristine S h ank currently resides
Arts with an emphasis in photography
in Rochester New York where she is an
from Syracuse University and a Bachelor
Assistant Professor of Photography at
of Fine Arts in photography from Univer-
Rochester Institute of Technology. She
sity of Northern Iowa. She has exhibited
is an artist working predominantly with
her work nationally and internationally at
photography to construct elaborate narra-
venues that include: Pyramid Art Gallery
tives. Her work has been shown in group
(Rochester, New York), Everson Museum
and solo throughout the United States.
of Art (Syracuse, New York), Soho Photo
Most recently Shank’s artwork was
Gallery (New York, New York), Zone Gallery
published in a monograph entitled She
(Kansas City, Missouri), Des Moines Art
Quietly Considers through Book smart
Center (Des Moines, Iowa), Cameraworks
Studios. Her work will also be included in
Gallery (Portland, Oregon), Gallery 621
Robert Hirsh’s latest edition of Exploring
(Tallahassee, Florida), FotoCircle Gallery
Color Photography: From the Darkroom
(Seattle, Washington), and Sol Mednick
to the Digital Studio.
Gallery, University of the Arts (Philadelphia,
http://www.christineshank.com/
Pennsylvania). Rowe’s piece Womb Worries
was recently included in Take Care that
was exhibited as part of Art Prize in Grand
Rapids, Michigan. Rowe is an assistant
professor of art and head of photography
at University of Texas at San Antonio.
http://libbyrowe.com/
14
michael
sherwin marni
shindelman
M ichael Sherw in is an Assistant
M arni S h indelman is associate
Professor of Photography and Intermedia
professor of art and an associate of the
at West Virginia University. Originally from
Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender
Southwestern Ohio, Sherwin received a
and Women’s Studies at the University
Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from
of Rochester. Her work has been shown
The Ohio State University in 1999, and in
internationally in venues such as Peloton
June of 2004 he received his Master of Fine
(Sydney, Australia) and The New Gallery
Arts in Photography from the University
(Calgary, Alberta), as well as across the
of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon. Using the
United States at the Houston Center for
mediums of photography, video and instal-
Photography (Texas), Buffalo Arts Studio
lation, Sherwin makes art that reflects
(New York), and the Barrett Art Center
on the experience of observing nature
(New York). She received her MFA from
through the lenses of science and popu-
the University of Florida.
lar culture. He has won numerous grants
http://marnishindelman.com/
and awards for his work, and has been
exhibited widely, including CEPA Gallery
in Buffalo, New York, SPACES Gallery in
Cleveland, Ohio, PUNCH Gallery in Seattle,
Washington, Dinnerware Contemporary
Arts in Tucson, Arizona, and Manifest
Creative Research Gallery in Cincinnati,
Ohio. Reviews and reproductions of his
work have been featured in The Photo
Review, Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and in the
2006 book, Plastic Cameras: Toying with
Creativity by Michelle Bates.
http://www.michaelsherwin.com/
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