I don't have the opportunity to see many exhibitions but this week there is one in my town, Fresno California, featuring recent photographs by Merg Ross and Craig Beal. I don't know if Craig Beal uses a large format camera or not, so I'll limit my review to Merg Ross's side of the exhibition since he shoots with a 4x5 and this site's protocol suggests that topics here should be LF-oriented.
The last exhibit I caught of Merg's was a retrospective a few years ago, lots of abstracts and some landscapes, All were excellent but the abstracts really captured my imagination. What genre Merg would be exhibiting this time was a complete mystery to me, but I had hoped there would be more abstracts and----the whole offering was of abstracts!
Merg's abstracts are somethng to behold--they are a feast of incredibly satisfying forms and textures---magical almost! Gaze at one for four or five minutes and you'll see things that aren't even, couldn't even be there. I know because the titles are straightforeward, for example:
"Feathers"
Are of course feathers. To this viewer they don't look like feathers, but a canyon maybe somewhere in the desert. The tops of the high walls look more like torn fabric rather than stone, so is it a canyon, torn fabric or feathers? I look again and see the trunk of a creosote deep in the canyon (but it isn't a canyon and there is no creosote, just the structural detail of some feather) then I see the torn fabric and the threads that make up the fabric but of course ther aren't any threads, again it is a detail of the feather. I leave and look at more photographs then return to "Feathers" only this time there is no canyon, no torn fabric but the sensation of...feathers! The print seems to explode with feathery-ness! Yes it is truly feathers---Merg told us so but the imagination had an ever so hard time believing what it read.
And that is just one print!
Two prints feature broken windows.
One window has been papered over on the inside and the paper has torn giving the viewer the sensation of a richly 3-D image that is incredibly deep---past the broken pane to the paper on the other side and the fathomless blackness of the shadows where the paper has torn.
The other window has been broken like a bullseye and unlike the other it is like looking at a flat sheet of posterboard---a symetterically printed bullseye target---but wait! There is a piece of window glass missing---it's absence is the only way (besides the title) of determining that it actually is a glass window we're looking at, and the missing piece of glass is like a window itsself, opening onto t world beyond the target--we only catch a glimpse of what is "beyond" through the small missing piece, but the brain now "sees" it as a broken window and not a bullseye.
The exhibit was filled with such gems for the eye to behold.
I noticed that the locations of some photos were on Mare's Island and I've got to wonder is those were taken during the outing I started to organize several years ago but had to pass it on to more capable hands when my niece decided to have her wedding on that week end.
Ah , but is is fine exhibition. If you're traveling through Fresno on the way to Yosemite or points North/South do try to catch it. The show runs through April 27 at Spectrum at 608 E. Olive in the Tower District. I'm not a member of this gallery and have no interest in this other than that I appreciate seeing fine large format photography.
Cheers!
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