New Chicago Photography at the Vermont Center for Photography, Brattleboro
Compelling work by Greg Stimac, Matt Siber, Jon Gitelson, Mary Farmilant, Brian Ulrich, Jason Lazarus
By: Michael Miller - Feb 05, 2007
February 2 - 25 at the Vermont Center for Photography
49 Flat Street · Brattleboro, VT 05301 · (802) 251-6051
Gallery hours: Friday 2:00 - 7:00, Saturday & Sunday 12:00 - 5:00.
Amidst the many new arts initiatives in the northern Berkshires (most of them in North Adams, Adams, and Pittsfield) there is no sign of any institution devoted exclusively to photography with the far-reaching mission of the International Center for Photography in New York or the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University. While there are a great many photographers in the Berkshires who might welcome such a facility, I'm not inclined to make an issue of this in view of the rich variety of exhibitions offered by local museums and galleries and the existence of a lively and sophisticated photography center only an hour to the east in Brattleboro—the Vermont Center for Photography—which offers monthly exhibitions, lectures, classes in digital and traditional photography, a monthly print workshop, and a rental darkroom. The exhibition schedule includes not only members' work, but that of a variety of photographers from outside the region. The VCP does an excellent job of serving the local photographic community, while keeping an eye on the rest of the world.
The current exhibition"People, Buildings and Cars: New Chicago Photography" is entirely in this spirit, presenting the work of six young Chicago photographers, Mary Farmilant, Jon Gitelson, Jason Lazarus, Matt Siber, Greg Stimac, and Brian Ulrich, who studied photography together at Columbia College in Chicago. As Michael Weinstein observes in his introductory text, "at a time - the turn of the millennium - when postmodern play was going out of fashion and photographers were running for cover under every available traditional genre - the Columbia group struck off on its own, pioneering a fresh form of cultural criticism, defined by recurrence to the realist-based shot, employed to make unsentimental judgements - sometimes mordant, sometimes (self-)ironic, and sometimes whimsical - about the culture jungle in which we live," inviting us to "within their shared yet humane and good-hearted skepticism about our lives in a world that threatens to cheapen and deflate our values if we do not take the critical distance that they have from it and, indeed, from ourselves."
While all six focus their attention on contemporary American life, each probes into different aspects of it. While Brian Ulrich, Jonathan Gitelson, and Matt Siber observe the world of commerce, either through shoppers in giant retail outlets or through advertising, Greg Stimac delves into gun culture, and Mary Farmilant explores the disquieting spaces of abandoned hospitals. Jason Lazarus is represented by a dreamy monochromatic image of the moon dwarfed by a swirling pattern of clouds. This is the only monochrome in the show, which is otherwise characterized by a cheerfully ironic or at least accepting attitude to color, which is not so often found among New England photographers. (You'll see quite a lot of black and white work in a VCP member's show, for example.)
In this exhibition I found myself particularly drawn into Mary Farmilant's selectively focused, square images of an empty hospital. As we contemplate a worn operating table, a decaying shower, or a empty room, we feel like solitary visitors wandering about this rather sinister building. I could also enter into Brian Ulrich's cynical, but humane vision of retail stores, in which we encounter a rack of plastic crucifixes and an elderly lady, probably Polish, critically examines plastic-wrapped celery in front of a supremely tacky balloon with a picture of a smiling girl surrounded by cartoonish flowers. In these his reliance on Andreas Gursky is both obvious and explicit, but he brings his own more emotionally sympathetic vision to his photographs. Greg Stimac's images of American gun-culture are appropriately scary. Enjoying one's arsenal appears as a family activity in these scenes, in which children cringe or hold their ears behind the happy marksmen. Matt Siber is represented by images from "The Untitled Project," in which he has used Photoshop to remove the texts from logos and signs to draw "attention to the role text plays in the modern landscape," and to emphasize "alternative forms of communication such as symbols, colors, architecture and corporate branding," as well as "the growing number of ways in which public voices communicate without using traditional forms of written language." Most intriguing was a wall of Polish adverts (in Poland, not Chicago!) with text removed and shown in a separate image. Jonathan Gitelson photographed his own car plastered with handbills, and portraits of likely applicants for improbable classified job ads, e.g. "rock star" and "oceanographer." Well, the show is about young photographers.
I thoroughly enjoyed the show, while my twenty-four-year-old companion, an artist, expressed some scepticism, since he's surrounded by young people who are doing similar things. On the other hand, I've joined in this this kind of tourism in the American cultural wasteland myself, and I could feel some camaraderie with these photographic Kulturkritiker. Also, don't forget to check out their web sites. (All are linked to their names above.) You'll find yourself, as I did, making a list of the photos you would have put in the show.
"People, Buildings and Cars" is worth the drive to Brattleboro, as are pretty much all VCP shows. Next month VCP member Jim Schlessinger will show his work (mostly black and white), and in March there will be a general member's show. Write those in your calendar, or go to the opening on the first Friday of each month, 5-8 pm, part of Brattleboro's extremely popular Gallery Walk.
http://michaelmillerphoto.com/
email: michael@michaelmillerphoto.com