June 23

Patty Zuver

Island Jetty

This piece was a pinhole photograph printed digitally on Arches.  In minimal language it suggested a shoreline, a couple of subtle waves, a jetty. I was drawn to the waves, the way they were paused. The photograph was nostalgic, romantic, and personal. I wanted to be close to it, enter it. But it was framed in painted wood and cardboard and Plexiglas so that there were more presentation elements than pictorial. The framing kept me on the gallery side of the glass.

Other viewers and I discussed the process of converting a pinhole photograph to a digital print and framing it. Someone presented this possibility: a pinhole photograph is the unique result of using a handmade camera with a little hole and no lens. The artist has taken a pinhole photograph, then cropped or cleaned it up, printed it digitally, and then matted and framed it. Maybe the artist was visibly abandoning the most basic analog process for digitalization and then further burying it in presentation. I don’t know–– I don’t think this work is asking to be read as conceptual.

Another point on the subject of presentation was brought up by different artist: We have to protect and preserve our work, especially when it is being shipped and installed. Thus the framing.

But I am left with what I see. This photograph has much in common in the artist’s work as I know it: nostalgic, quiet, utilizing a kind of pictorial reduction. I don’t think this piece is asking for a lot of dissection. It simply offers a moment, a tone, a view to experience. I just wished for more access to it.

EF