Perhaps the most prevalent trend in contemporary photography is a turning away from technical trickery toward a more ³purist² approach, indicated by the number of photographic artists who eschew digital means (and, some cases, even color) in the excellent exhibition ³Tripping the Light Fantastic,² at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, Chelsea, through April 6.
One example are Alex Braverman¹s pictures of dancers. Born in Lithuania, now a resident of Texas, Braverman often captures his lithe subjects in mid air, immortalizing their athletic grace in pictures that exemplify the term ³poetry in motion.²
Russian-born Dmitry Chetverukhin has garnered international acclaim for pictures that combine formal austerity with a strong sense of narrative. Chetverukhin¹s ability to invest fine art photography with the aesthetic of high fashion is especially striking in cunningly conceptualized period pieces such as ³Trance 1930¹s.²
Widely exhibited and honored photographer, performance artist and journalist Donna L. Clovis explores issues of gender and identity, often by integrating aspects of photography into three dimensions in sculpture and performance, as well as in projects such as a partnership with MIT involving the use of digital photography in installation works. For all her technical sophistication, however, Clovis also excels in capturing intimate moments in candid genre photos such as ³Cuban Woman² and street scenes like ³Salute.²
Wildlife photography achieves high art status in the well traveled New York photographer Chris Dei, who focuses on the wild kingdom in far-flung corners of the globe, particularly Africa. Kenya provided Dei with one of her most memorable images: a racing zebra herd, their stripes merging kinetically.
California photographer Heidi Fickinger seeks a synthesis of natural and man-made beauty in her crystalline prints of majestic clouds or the black girders of a bridge as boldly framed as one of Franz Kline¹s calligraphic paintings. Indeed, Fickinger, who studied fine art at Utah State University, applies a particularly painterly vision to her chosen medium, both in terms of composition and her concentration on texture and chiaroscuro.
Painterly qualities also come into play in Louisiana resident Eleanor Owen Kerr¹s poetic topographical views of land masses and waterways, with their dramatic shadowplay and luminous reflections. Seeking the landscape¹s ³mysterious hidden depths,² Kerr exerts control over subtle tonal modulations during the printing process in her darkroom.
Gloria Marco Munuera, a Spanish-born professor of photography in Florence, Italy, does away with the camera altogether, employing a technique known as photogram to create images with light on photo-sensitive paper. Mythic feminine figures emerge like apparitions by virtue of Munuera¹s skillful manipulation of the unpredictable process.
Pennsylvania photographer Jennifer L. Pum, an alumnae of the Art Institute of Philadelphia, aims for emotional impact in both her figurative and landscape imagery. Toward this end, Pum employs a blurred effect to suggest a muddled state of mind in a picture of a woman ruminating in a window or brings a sharper focus to bear in an image of a tree as tellingly detailed as a portrait.
Closeup images of the human body are both abstract and suggestive of landscape elements in the photographs of P Tymchuk who states that her greatest satisfaction is when viewers are attracted to her work ³on an intuitive level.² Saturating her prints with radiant color, contrasted with areas of shadow, enhances the sometimes baffling beauty of Tymchuk¹s pictures.
Another fine colorist, Caroline Valenti, who lives and works in Perth, Australia, often photographs willowy young women in wistful postures in nondescript settings where peeling walls or other textural details contrast sharply with their ethereal presence. Valenti¹s apparent preference for pale hues in soft focus lends her pictures a delicate lyricism akin to Degas¹ pastels of youthful ballerinas.
Also including photomontages by the versatile artist Alex Hiam, whose work was reviewed in our February/March issue, "Tripping the Light Fantastic" is a valuable survey of current trends in art photography.