July | August 2006 - Boston Photography Focus

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ook review Lodima Press Portfolio Series featuring: Home by Nicholas Nixon Solitudes by Carl Chiarenza Common Mementos by George Tice Revere, PA: Lodima Press, 2006 Review by Julia Dolan, Ph.D. Candidate, Art History Program, Boston University Pennsylvania-based Lodima Press has produced limited edition photographic books since 1981, but until recently only those photographs created by Michael A. Smith and Paula Chandlee—the company’s founder and his wife—were published by the press. In 2004 Smith widened his scope to include, among others, a series of small books featuring previously unpublished works by active American photographers. The Lodima Press Portfolio Series, which debuted in September of 2005, will grow by four to six new books each year for the foreseeable future. Nicholas Nixon, from the book Home. www.prcboston.org | book review If the first three portfolios in the series, Home by Nicholas Nixon, Solitudes by Carl Chiarenza, and George Tice’s Common Mementos, represent the overarching theme of the whole, it is clear that threads of nostalgia and quietude will link the series’ varied photographers together. Imagery aside, the manner in which the books are printed is exceptional, making the act of looking at the photographs even more of a pleasure. Lodima Press rightly prides itself on the use of the 600-line screen quadtone printing process. The photographers’ images, uninterrupted by any evidence of a screenbased reproduction method, rest on the pages like gelatin silver prints on a neutral gallery wall. Indeed, the abstracted studies of paper constructions in Chiarenza’s Solitudes are reminiscent of the glorious, dense, often murky textures so apparent in the photogravures of Camera Work fame. The publisher correctly touts the portfolio series, which will include such photographers as Barbara Bosworth, Larry Fink, and Emmet Gowin, as functioning “within the tradition of artists’ small books.” Each book features just ten to eighteen photographs, allowing for the artists to present a small suite of work or a taste of a larger series. One cannot help, however, but be concerned about the diminutive size of these portfolios. In an era of incessant visual bombardment, these intimate books, already quiet in both size and photographic message, are at risk of being overshadowed by meatier publications. While the hardcover, limited-edition, signed copies will most certainly hold their own on a crowded bookcase, the more reasonably priced, soft cover offerings seem too diminutive. Perhaps an additional release of hardcover copies at a mid-range price point will allow these small artists’ books to hold their own amongst larger photographic tomes, while simultaneously protecting the delicate messages that each photographer’s work unveils inside. Carl Chiarenza, from the book Solitudes. George Tice, from the book Common Mementos.
ook review Left: Edward Burtynsky, Bao Steel #8, Shanghai, China, from the China Series, 2005. Digital chromogenic print. Right: Emmet Gowin, Aeration Pond, Toxic Water Treatment Facility, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, 1989. Toned gelatin silver print. Imaging a Shattering Earth by Claude Baillargeon The catalogue is co-published by the Meadow Brook Art Gallery, College of Arts and Sciences, Oakland University, and CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival, 2005 Review by Rebecca A. Senf, Ph.D. Candidate, Art History Program, Boston University The recent exhibition catalogue Imaging a Shattering Earth: Contemporary Photography and the Environmental Debate brings together powerful photographs, supports them with thought-provoking essays, and provides useful short biographies of the artists. The provocative title and compelling list of photographers represented in the exhibition, which originated at the Meadow Brook Art Gallery at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan last fall, are tantalizing to anyone interested in contemporary landscape photography. The fully illustrated catalogue features fifty-six photographs by Edward Burtynsky, John Ganis, Peter Goin, Emmet Gowin, David T. Hanson, Jonathan Long, David Maisel, David McMillan, Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, John Pfahl, and Mark Ruwedel. These “testimonies” record the damage we have done to our Earth, and present the evidence in an undeniable language. “Our world is changing. We are destroying it; destroying the air we breathe, the water we drink, the land that sustains us. We are laying waste to the only home we have.” So begins Robert F. Kennedy Junior’s introductory essay. This book led me to a disheartening epiphany: if our world’s leaders have allowed the environmental disasters recorded here, we are doomed. What these photographs illustrate, however, is that our leaders not only have allowed them, but at times were (or currently are) sponsoring the pollution, degradation and waste. How can we expect individuals to recycle or relinquish gas-guzzling SUVs, when our leadership betrays us so Both main essays mention that except for Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison’s collaboration, men made all of Shattering Earth’s photographs. The curator, Claude Baillargeon, wanted photographers whose direct, yet distanced, observation of the earth’s altered topography created a 21st century parallel to the 1975 landmark exhibition New Topographics. Maia-Mari Sutnik’s essay discusses women photographers who grapple with environmental issues, but whose approach was either more personal or journalistic than Baillargeon wanted. These photographs gain strength grouped as they are here. I shared the book with two friends: one mentioned how difficult, painful it was to look at the images, the other said how beautiful they were. Put Shattering Earth on your coffee table and let it begin conversations about where we went so wrong, and how we will set things right again. www.prcboston.org | book review
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Page 3 and 4: from the director As we approach th
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Page 7: education Judith Black, Robbie and
Page 11 and 12: Facing page : Michael Hintlian, Lab
Page 13 and 14: Left : Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, A
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Page 19 and 20: parting shot Elliott Erwitt ending

July | August 2006 - Boston Photography Focus

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