Like other modern technologies, photography outgrows specific methods quickly. The glass ambrotype had a run of only about 15 years, and was largely abandoned by the mid-1860s. But the first two pieces in “Photo 11,” a group show at Rosslyn’s Artisphere, are glass ambrotypes, made by Daniel Afzal in 2010. In the context of this exhibition, with its digital and inkjet prints, Afzal’s portraits appear archaic. Yet there’s something contemporary about them, which they share with other images in this grouping.
With their soft focus and milky texture, Afzal’s pictures appear to have been plucked from the past. But their subjects, identified as Andrea and Ena, don’t gaze earnestly into the lens, the way people did in photography’s early days. The girls look away, as if not entirely prepared to cooperate. In an age when people are photographed frequently — even incessantly — the subject is no longer required to engage the camera.
(Courtesy Andre Hemstedt and Tine Reimer/Goethe-Institut Washington) - HANDOUT: Andre Hemstedt and Tine Reimer, \"Constructing Motion,\" 2010, on view at the Goethe-Institut's \"gute aussichten\" photo exhibit.
There are few portraits among these 47 images, which were selected by former Corcoran Gallery associate curator Amanda Maddox. But there are a lot of sideways glances, attempts to capture life without formality and on the sly. In a curious sub-theme, three of the 18 photographers present glimpses from moving trains: Stacy Evans shoots individual, everyday scenes; Sandra Rottman does diptychs of industrial sites; and Robert Bocci presents the northern Italian countryside in a sort of film strip, each frame with a silhouetted passenger in the foreground. The ultimate in offhand looks, these one-time-only pictures submit to the moment, and accept the locomotive’s movement as a collaborator.
In a sense, the show is strong on portraiture, but it’s of places, not people. D.B. Stovall offers big, bold, straight-on views of small-town buildings, Michael Borek inspects interiors of a Scranton factory and Mark Parascandola takes the long view of modern-day Mediterranean-style structures arrayed on hillsides. Two pictures from Barbara Johnson’s “Eastern Market Series” depict single figures, their solitariness emphasized by anonymous gray and tan backdrops. More typical, however, are Lorne Peterson’s “Antigueno Street,” in which a person is represented by just a shadow, and cloud observer Helen Glazer’s “A Plane Full of People Passed by,” in which only vapor remains.
Catherine Day’s “Curtain” is printed on fabric and hung on a rod, and Arista Slater-Sandoval’s work (also on fabric) montages repeated images, Warhol-style. But most of this work is realistic, without heavy conceptual baggage. Near-abstract elements, like the out-of-focus street light in Evans’s “Woman Walking,” merely serve to highlight the overall sense of authenticity. If many of the participants in “Photo 11” eyeball the world from oblique angles, the resulting work is nonetheless straightforward.
Solemn studies
Rebecca Sampson, one of seven young photographers shown in “Gute Aussichten: New German Photography,” also depicts people who look away from the camera. But there’s nothing spontaneous about her work, which focuses on people with eating disorders. Her images are made in commonplace locations, yet feel stagey and a little stiff. That’s characteristic of this mainly solemn show, whose most playful (and colorful) work is Samuel Henne’s formal portraiture of assemblages of everyday objects. Backed by blocks of pink, yellow or green, these coolly absurd pictures are half Dada, half kitchen-gadget spreads from Real Simple magazine.
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