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Exhibit Preview: Digital stills and Nash Nash Editions show hangs out array of creative ideas in photographic art Friday, September 15, 2000 By Mary Thomas, Post-Gazette Art Critic
What does musician Graham Nash -- as in Crosby, Stills & Nash -- have in common with some of the most proficient fine arts photographers working with cutting-edge technology today? The answer may be found in the exhibition "Digital Frontiers: Photography's Future at Nash Editions," which opens tonight at Silver Eye Center for Photography.
Political and environmental activist Nash is best known as one-third of the group that was named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. Born in England in 1942, he started out as a member of The Hollies. Some may also recognize his 1995 multimedia, autobiographical performance piece, "LifeSighs."
But he is less known as a photographer and a collector of photographs, an interest kindled by his father, who was an amateur photographer. By the late 1980s, Nash had assembled a significant collection of 2,400 images, which he sold through Sotheby' s auction house for $2.17 million. In 1991, he used most of the sale money to found, with one-time road manager Mac Holbert, Nash Editions, the first fine-art studio in the world dedicated to digital printmaking. The studio would focus on limited-edition, high-resolution prints on museum-grade media.
Nash's action was a "real contribution to the [photography] field," Silver Eye executive director Linda Benedict-Jones says. "In the '80s, people found it exciting and heady to take a photographic image, load it into a computer, play with it -- montage, collage. But at the end of the day, they had an image on a computer screen. They could print it out on Xerox paper ... there were no attractive options. A lot of those artists would show their work on computer screens. There was a huge void.
"Graham Nash said, 'This needs some legitimate form of output.' He talked to Iris, bought six of their largest printers [ink jet printers used in commercial printing to preview an image before sending it into production], then they began to experiment with different processes and papers. This show is a result of his quest."
The exhibition originated at the prestigious George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, N.Y., and is representative of the quality of presentation that Benedict-Jones had in mind when she renovated the center, adding climate control and a security system.
A diverse mix of stylistic approach and subject is represented in nearly 30 works by 16 mostly American artists, six of whom are women. That all except two are in their 50s and 60s is a surprise, considering the medium. But Benedict-Jones points out that using the studio is "not inexpensive -- you have to have an established reputation to take this on." Also, she adds, older artists tire of darkrooms and their dangerous chemicals. "This is a comfortable and non-life-threatening way to make images.
Two works by Nash are in the show, including the carefully staged "Self Portrait, Plaza," from 1974 (digitalized in 1992), taken in the hotel's bathroom. The artist's face reflects from a shaving mirror in the photograph's foreground; Nash stands in the background, stripped to the waist, his long hair, beard and slender frame themselves reflecting a '70s standard of male beauty.
A prominent spot is given to Olivia Parker's "Pitcher," an oversized white vessel on black background that looms like a huge full moon at the far side of the gallery. Upon closer inspection, the viewer finds that Parker has overlain a curious, appropriated anatomical image of a fetus in the womb over the pristine white domestic object, introducing a feminist connection. In "Cup & Saucer," the line of the cut-away head of the imposed drawing mimics the open edge of the cup. What is most memorable, however, is how like fine drawings the works are, an illusion aided by the textured paper they're printed on.
Celebrated British artist David Hockney is represented by two superlative, color-saturated, painterly works that challenge perception -- as in "Are those brushstrokes?" -- and perspective. The viewer is drawn into "The Studio March 28th 1995," looking for a landing space, trying to determine the dimensionality of the large abstract painting in the background and the smaller one on front easel. Canvases turned to the wall, right front, introduce a realism that seems to help, but only momentarily. Navigating the neighboring "Second Detail. Snail Space March 25th 1995" proves just as challenging, and rewarding.
Across from him, are two richly detailed, black-and-white photographs of film sets by Robert Cumming that have the complexity and look of an etching. "Submarine," carefully composed around a large, circular cross-section of the ship, could be an illustration for a Jules Verne novel, in theme and nostalgic appearance.
Framing those are works with a very contemporary sensibility.
To the left, is Martina Lopez's "Revolutions in Time, #1," a haunting composition that combines found historic portraits with a background that holds a wedding party and a smoking industrial site, suggesting a narrative but leaving the details to the viewer. So too, on the right, Joyce Neimanas expects the visitor to make the connections in visually strong "Reproduce" between the recoiling, flower-surrounded cartoon drawing of Snow White and a navel-baring, sexy, real-life brunette, combining references to sociocultural issues and to technological ones.
If Lopez is, as Benedict-Jones says, the "queen of digital imaging," Robert Heinecken, at 69, is the elder in the exhibition. But you'd never know it from his work, "Shiva, King of Dancers Manifesting as a Transvestite." This explosive array of mainly red, heavily symbolic images -- lipstick, high heels, rhinestone jewelry -- that radiates from a multiarmed, lace-stockinged, blond-wigged central figure lives up to her observation that "he's been irreverent his whole life, always doing provocative work."
One piece from the series "A Thousand Centuries," by Esther Parada, illustrates her style, but alone doesn't convey her revisionist take on Christopher Columbus. In contrast, having just two of Carol Flax's "Memories" series broadens the application of her repeated message "Those records are permanently sealed" from a commentary on adoption papers to any inability to express feeling or extend commitment.
Other works stand out for such things as the handmade paper they're printed on, their poetic sensibility, an emphasis on texture. One disadvantage to being in a very smart class is that it's hard to stand out, and some works in the exhibition that would be special in a lesser show tend to pale here. However, each is worthy of attention because combined they form a good overview of the potential of the medium.
Benedict-Jones says that the Nash Editions studio has been so successful that it has expanded from its original Manhattan Beach, Calif., location to Boston and New York. "It's really catching on."
A gallery brochure produced by Eastman, with eight color illustrations, is available for a nominal fee. In it, curator Therese Mulligan cites evidence of digital printing's newly-won respectability, including the proliferation of studios, its inclusion in academic curricula and the establishment of professional publications and organizations.
It seems to be the wave of the future, and you can catch it at Silver Eye.
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WHERE: Silver Eye Center for Photography, 1015 E. Carson St., South Side.