Photography Quarterly #88

This publication is made possible in part by generous support from individuals, CPW members, subscribers, PQ, advertisers, the William Talbot Hillman Foundation, the Henry Buhl Foundation, the Sondra and Charles Gilman Jr. Foundation, the Ellen and Gary Davis Foundation, the Douncousos Family Foundation, the Houston Jewish Community Foundation, the Milton and Sally Avery Foundation, the Douglas C. James Charitable Trust, and with public funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. Thank you.

NYSCA

PHOTOGRAPHY Quarterly staff

Editors, Kate Menconeri & Ariel Shanberg Ad Manager,Larry Lewis Editorial Intern, Karen Schlessinger Woodstock Day School Intern Student, Julian Hom Composition, Digital Design Studio, Kingston, NY

PHOTOGRAPHY Quarterly is published by the Center for Photography at Woodstock, a not-profit 50 I (c) 3 arts and education organization, founded in 1977 to serve photographers and their audiences through programs in education, exhibition, residency,publication, fellowship, and services for artists.

PHOTOGRAPHY Quarterly is printed by Meridian Printing, East Greenwich, RI. and distributed by Ubiquity Distributors, Brooklyn, NY

PHOTOGRAPHY Quarterly #88, Vol. 21, No.3. ISSN 0890 4639. Copyright ©2004. Center for Photography at Woodstock, 59 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY 12498.

Text ©2003 Ellen K. Levy, K6an-Jeff Baysa,Sarah Hasted Mann, Mary Mattingly, Tim Hawkins, Angelika Rinnhoffer, Eric Lindbloom, Melissa Eder, Lisa Robinson,Ariel Shanberg,Kate Menconeri.

All photographs and texts reproduced in PHOTOGRAPHY Quarterly are copyrighted by the artists and writers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical. without written permission from the Center for Photography.The opinions and ideas expressed in this publication do not represent official positions of the Center

SUBSCRIBE:to PHOTOGRAPHY Quarterly four times a year USA $25 / Canada & Mexico $40 / International $45. Pleasemake checks payable to CPW; MC & VISA accepted.T 845 679 9957 / F 845 679 6337 I info@cpw.org / www.cpw.org

CPW STAFF

Executive Director, Ariel Shanberg Program Director, Kate Menconeri Operations Manager,Larry Lewis Arts Administration Interns: Karen Schlessinger,Kelly Kilgallon Volunteers: Jane Glucksman,Aaron Miller, Jacelyn Blank

DIRECTOR EMERITUS Colleen Kenyon

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Peter Brandt, Susan Ferris,Sarah Hasted Mann,W.M. Hunt, David Karp, David Maloney, Kitty McCullough, Yossi Milo, Sarah Morthland, Dion Ogust, Robert Peacock, Platon, Kathleen Ruiz, Ariel Shanberg, Alan Siegel,Gerald Slota, Bob Wagner

ADVISORY BOARD

Philip Cavanaugh,Brian Clamp, Susan Edwards, Julie Galant,Alexander Grey, Howard Greenberg - Founder,Sue Hartshorn, Doug James,Ellen Levy,Peter MacGill, Marcia Reid Marsted, Elliott Meisel,Jeffrey Milstein, Ann Morse, Gloria Nimetz, Sandra Phillips, Lilo Raymond, Ernestine Ruben, Neil Trager, RickWester

SYNTHETIC LIGHTNING: COMPLEX SIMULATIONS OF NATURE ellen

4-9

Dear Reader,

Perhaps,if you had some extra time to yourself, and you happened to tip issue #88 on its side, you'd find yourself face to face with twin symbols of infinity. Infinitycoincidental or not -rings throughout PQ BB'sthree features. The ideas and images in the following pages transport us to vast intersections in photography and our world today and remind us of photography's ability to reveal worlds within and beyond the grasp of the naked eye.

Artist and curator Ellen K. Levy brings together nine artists in Synthetic Lightning: Complex Simulations of Nature, whose work, either through physical gesture captured by the camera or done within the universe of the darkroom, reveals the very complex systems that exist within the smallest regions of the natural world.Their use of photography suspendsthese systems for a brief moment, giving us an opportunity to find poetry in the very architecture of nature.

While the artists in Synthetic Lightning look to the world around us, curator (and practicing physician) K6an-Jeff Baysa features eleven artists in Divining Fragments: Reconciling the Body who look inward appropriating modern and antiquarian medical mapping technologies including x-rays, MRls, CAT, and PET scans, to reveal that while we have developeo the ability to see deep within our own bodies, our understanding of it is perhaps more fractured then ever

Finally,Sarah Hasted Mann, Director of Photography at Ricco/Maresca Gallery presents six exciting new voices from both near and far as part of PHOTOGRAPHY NOW, our annual national call for entries. The vibrant new talent featured divulges the limitless boundaries of photography now!

Our thanks to all the artists and contributors for their help and inspiration in assembling this issue and for showing us some of the infinite directions the imagination may lead.

With many worlds yet to explore - stay in touch and enjoy #88!

Synthetic

ELLENK. LEVY

Many people identify the I 8th century poet and artist, William Blake, as an archetypical mystic in his disavowal of scientific rationalism. I sometimes imagine him encountering complexity science and believe that some of the studies and simulations now underway that concern complex systems would have intrigued him despite their scientific cast.As opposed to reductionism, the definition of a complex system generally involves simple components that interact with others and lead to new, emergent properties. Studies of complex systems point the way to a synthesis of the humanities and sciences in a way that Blake might well have favored had they existed during his lifetime. Although forays into the social sciences have made complexity difficult to grasp as a predictive science,they have made the study of complex systems potentially accessibleto a wider lay audience, including artists. As an example of the breadth of study, one research area at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) website "emphasizes the interplay between dynamics and organization in the evolution of natural and social phenome" I na.

According to Murray Gell-Mann, founder of the SFI,a measure of complexity is the effort to describe a system's "effective regularities."2 Many artists would intuitively think of the consistencies and distinguishing features in their own art and that of others if they were to learn of Gell-Mann's description of "effective regularities." And like the term "complexity," many artists create "simulations" in the popular rather than scientific understanding of the term (e.g., models). We, as viewers of art, tend to regard models as convincing when they capture features of the world that parallel our own

Lightning: Complex

experience of what is essential.The artwork examined here (which was originally presented in the exhibition Synthetic Lightning: Complex Simulations of Nature at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, from November I - December 21, 2003) resonates with ideas and experiences surrounding the study of complex systems. While the references are expressed metaphorically by most of the artists, some of the photographers implement simulations of complex systems in more scientifically rigorous ways.3 Wherever the works fall on the spectrum from metaphoric to scientific approaches, I believe each artist captures an experience of the world as a totality in a way that rings true.

Photography, especially when broadened to include digital media, is well suited to engage issues relating to complexity.Through straight documentation, photographers can capitalize on diversity, randomness, and scaling and can isolate phenomena associated with complexity, such as fiocking, fractals, and turbulence. In its simplest sense, photography is a chemical process requiring a camera, film, and a light source. Some chemical interactions entail features of complex systems, including diffusion, disequilibrium, and self-organization. As Vicki Goldberg has frequently pointed out in the New YorkTimes, photography is in a different position from other art forms in that it has from its beginning been linked with technology. One can make photographs with infrared radiation, electrons, and X-rays.

With few exceptions the artists presented in Synthetic Lightning: Complex Simulations of Nature, have not used cameras to produce the works on view.The artists have created metaphoric, com-

Simulations

putational, and symbolic works grounded in photography and the computer, encompassing straightforward photographic documentation (Nina Katchadourian), darkroom and digital manipulation (Susan Rankaitis and Suzanne Anker), interactive video (Golan Levin), and chance procedures (Carol Pfeffer). Stylistic characteristics vary and visual focus is soft or sharp, close-up or panoramic. A number of the artists use multiple units that suggest a step-by-step transformation from one state to another, while others rely on a single shot.The emotional te0or is also varied: the sensibilities project mock objectivity (Katchadourian), technological seduction (Levin and Joseph Nechvatal), and wonder (Charles Lindsay).

Despite differences, the artists share interests in modeling some aspect of nature. A major objective for complexity scientists is to simulate large-scale systems in nature such as evolution. By contrast, the stated aim of many of the artists is to particularize patterns located among disparate groupings. Some of the artists emphasize relationships of parts to wholes, repeat forms at different scales,and enlist chance procedures. A feature of much of the work illustrated here is the aesthetic expression of fluidity (Susan Derges).Artists who wish to capture the varied shapes assumed by fluids can also use computer programs that discriminate among different situations of fluidity (Levin). These pursuits are applied to visualizing the working of nature in a way that highlights its holistic character, and in this respect the artists reflect the expansive spirit intrinsic to studies of complex systems.These photographers are not unique in their interests, and some of the interests listed above can be seen in early periods of art history, particularly with respect

of Nature

to patterning. What has changed is the intense, cumulative, often systematic pursuit of these areas within photography.

COURTING CHANCE

Photographers today can explore chance by pursuing numerous unconventional methods of printing and developing. Chemical reactions and surface tension can account for some of the results. Artists continue to experiment with alternate ways of producing and capturing images,such as the camera obscura, photograms, and flash photography. For example, Harold Edgerton used a strobe light to examine drops falling through the air and their subsequent splashes.In this way Edgerton documented manifestations of complexity-splashes made by objects falling into water present examples of complex fluid behavior

Susan Derges, a British photographer, has devised her own method of strobe lighting to model interrelationships of sound, water, and light waves. She generated The Observer and the Observed:Face # I 5 ( 199 I), by vibrating a small jet of water with a speaker According to the 199 I technical description provided as an accompanying catalog note, "Sine waves cause the water to form into a coherent standing wave, which when illuminated by a strobe light (pulsing at the same frequency as the sound) transforms the water wave into a series of individual droplets suspended in time and space. Each drop of water also becomes a small lens,which focuses the face or eye of the observer from above." In

related prints, Derges treats the photographic medium as a means of discovery, determining the parameters of her art and then letting chance work.

Artists rarely engage chance the same way. Lindsay and Pfeffer share interests in bubble-like formations and the interchangeability of the very small in scale with the vast. Charles Lindsay defined his mysterious gelatin silver prints from his series ScienceF1ct1onas ... made from negatives utilizing a carbon emulsion on a transparent polyester base." According to Lindsay,"The textures refiect the induced infiuence of evaporation, static electric charge, and microscopic particle behavior." He is not interested that his work be seen as a scientific visualization of complexity but intends· his work to reveal his " interest in space exploration, microscopic discovery, and abstract imagery-bringing full circle the visual infiuences of an early career in exploration geology, living with a remote hunting tribe in Indonesia, and his ongoing fascination with the implications of understanding our relative scale within the universe.

Carol Pfeffer synthesizes her images by running light through a substrate to yield camera-less prints. According to the artist, she places methyl benzene, an adhesive with a slow setting time, between two non-porous surfaces of silicon dioxide to establish a spreading interface between the liquid and solids. To arrest this activity, Pfeffer removes the negative carrier from an enlarger and "scoops" the composite above the condenser.The subsequent projection is exposed onto an emulsion-coated surface, and the final

Fujifiex C-Print is reversed by paper negative transfer.To this viewer, Pfeffer's prints look like close ups of mold, bacteria, or trapped bubbles within stained glass windows. Her prints appear to simulate the effect of time.

SHARED PATTERNS

Susan Rankaitis and Suzanne Anker use combinatorial techniques to manipulate codes and symbols. Both focus on DNA as language, and like scientists they explore new imaging techniques that suggest hidden brain processes.Like Lindsay,neither Anker nor Rankaitis aim to make scientific visualizations. Instead, their works are metaphoric mappings of one realm upon another. Anker's digital images often evoke the very large or the minute in size. Similarly Rankaitis's images of base nucleotides are without assigned scale and swim in a sea of silver-toned light.

Digital tools are not as closely linked as photography is to a referent and have less obvious "truth-value." Instead, they have encouraged collage techniques of cutting and pasting as seen in Anker's digital prints. Anker consistently compares nature to culture in her art. The digital prints reveal images of the axis line and shape of butterfiy wings in MRI and PET images of the brain. In another print from the series, Anker draws analogies between the patterns of a city and neuronal mapping. According to the artist, " ... constellations emerge from these distinct models calling into question the ways in which biological form is replicated in the cultural domain." Rankaitis evokes the fiuidity of water in her prints, which arrest a

sense of underlying Brownian-like movement. The sparkling metallic pigments generate a sense of alchemy amidst the organic. Rankaitis uses the base pair letters of DNA along with gears and diagrams as a primary alphabet, which she then permutes. Her activity is flexible and spontaneous, revealing the artist's ingenuity working with a limited repertoire of symbols.

COMPUTATIONAL SIMULATIONS

Golan Levin is one of the contemporary artists who possess skills in advanced computer technology. A graduate of MIT's newmedia laboratory, he makes use of Navier-Stokes equations (the foundation of fluid mechanics) to create an interactive, intermedia art form that combines sound and visual effects.4 In Levin's display, the cursor provides a repulsive force from which simulated fluid diverges. Levin implements his simulations with the aim of tracing the movement of a gesture through virtual space. In the process he produces an environment of glowing light and dramatic sound.

Levin's high-tech capabilities only partly succeed in masking a romantic sensibility that redirects the functional, household PC to the personal, poetic, and even haptic sense of touch. In dialogue with modernism and painting, his images recall the flowing vision of Thomas Wilfred's Lumia rather than the "machine in the garden." Viewers stand before Levin's computer art without directions and must bring their own resources to the work. One remembers that the early mark of modernism was to leave spectators to

their own devices and enjoy freedom of (from) interpretation.

COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS

Artists implementing computational simulations ally themselves directly with the methodology of complexity scientists and industrial engineers. Simulations allow for the testing and control of events that could be fatal or helpful. In Chaotic Pendulum,Ellen K. Levy provides examples of the industrial applications of technological innovations, whether on the scale of controlling ventricular arrhythmias or managing cyclones. In the detail featured here, Levy portrays economics as a complex adaptive system, comparing the evolution of economics to biological evolution and visualizing the continually changing constraints and resource bases brought about by constant innovation. Accordingly, complexity studies offer new topics for artistic exploration.

The immune system is another complex adaptive system that notably learns from mistakes. For example, in real life the immune system "learns" from its encounters with viruses and develops defenses in the form of antibodies. Computer viruses share properties with the living in that they reproduce, store information, and mutate. They mimic some of the propagative activity of real viruses,as anyone knows who has suffered an attack by the ILOVEYOU bug. Joseph Nechvatal simulates a computer virus, records images of its progress at different times, and employs a computerrobot to paint the images onto canvas.By doing this he makes tan-

gible the presence of unseen, hostile forces that are interacting with their environment. According to Nechvatal, these concerns have led him to explore the realm of artificial life (synthetic systems that exhibit behaviors characteristic of real life). Nechvatal works with a programmer/collaborator Stephane Sikora to achieve his aesthetic goals. Collaborations such as these are increasing in frequency as artists with traditional training ally themselves with scientists knowledgeable in computer applications.

EMERGENCE

Like scientists,artists can model behavior by encouraging the emergence of innate traits through artistic interventions. Som_eartists have in effect collaborated with animals to produce art. For example the artist Hubert Duprat provided caddis-fly larvae with precious stones. The insects readily incorporated them into their cases.5 Nina Katchadourian similarly performs an artistic intervention by substituting red yarn for a portion of a spider web. The humor is that the spider reacts just as we would to an unwanted intrusion, hastily tearing apart the threads as soon as the artist places them. She then photographs the results, which reveal delicate line drawings in space. By this means, she succeeds not only in modeling the insect's natural response but also in providing a witty artistic commentary on process and performance art. One might further conjecture that, had Katchadourian provided red yarn to a bowerbird, the bird would have accepted the gift and incorporated it into its nest.

No matter how correct or compelling the ideas, complexity science would not be having a visible impact on the fine arts and photography unless its ideas were well publicized and it tapped a rich vein for artistic exploration. Proof of this last statement is the fact that Einstein's Special and General Theories of Relativity, although vital intellectually, had (relatively) few artistic ramifications for Cubism until the I 920's.6 Several exhibitions have addressed particular aspects of complex systems. For example, the Ars Electronica 1993 festival included computational simulations while Ned Kahn's 1998 Turbulent Landscapes exhibition at the Exploratorium in San Francisco made concepts about the "patterns created by natural forces" visible through artists constructing physical models of turbulence. Philip Galanter and I subsequently set out to explore the broad impact of complexity and emergence on contemporary art and to make some of the concepts and methodologies accessible to the general public via artwork. The traveling exhibition, Complexity: Art and Complex Systems, originated in 2002 at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz. It included a range of media, documented categories of artistic approaches, and featured artists' explorations of complex systems.7

The provocative artworks examined here have come a long way from early artworks involving applications of science and technology. Billy Kluver, founder of Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT), once characterized this interdisciplinary collaboration of artists and engineers as the generally "humorless, earnest experiments of EAT' As Harold Rosenberg said about artists working

with scientists and engineers, "Style is determined not by the artist's materials or the apparatus he uses but by the quality of his mind."8 What does complexity science offer practitioners and observers of (and readers about) contemporary art? Perhaps in time it might help explain how the mind works, produces culture, and creates art, like William Blake's,in all its manifold grace.

2003, Ellen K. Levy

Ellen K. Levy has exhibited extensively in the U.S. and abroad. She explores interrelationships among art, science, and technology in her art, teaching, and writings. Levy received an art commission from NASA in 1995 and was Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Arts and Sciencesat Skidmore College in 1999,a position funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. She has artistically been involved in issues raised by the study of complexity science since 1985.

Synthetic Lightning: Complex Simulations of

Nature originated as an exhibition curated by Ellen K. Levy,at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, November I - December 21, 2003.

I. http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/research/indexResearchAreas.html

2. EK Levy met with Dr Gell-Mann at the Santa Fe Institute in May, 2002, and he clarified the definition of complexity.

3. Philip Galanter and I explored four general categories of artistic response to complex systems while conducting research for a traveling art exhibition and catalog (see endnote #7).

4. Coveny, P and Highfield, R.,( 1995), Frontiers of Complexity The Search for Order in a Chaotic World, (NYC: Fawcett Columbine), pp. 97-98.

5. Seppala, M; Vanhala, J; Weintraub, L., eds. ( 1998), Animal, Anima, Animus, (Pori, Finland: Frame Publications), catalog for the exhibition Animal, Anima, Animus, pp.50-58.

6. There are several reasons according to art historian Linda Henderson. One was that they did not lend themselves with ease to visual expression as compared with ideas of the fourth dimension. In addition, the ideas did not reach the artists quickly. Linda Henderson's book argues that Einstein's Special and General Theories of Relativity did not have any real impact on French artists until the 1920s For a complete account of the evidence see Henderson, L. D. ( 1983), The Fourth Dimension and NonEuclidean Geometry in Modem Art, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

7. Philip Galanter and Ellen K. Levy are co-curators of the traveling exhibition COMPLEXITY, first exhibited at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY, New Paltz in the fall of 2002.The exhibition is an inclusive,cross-disciplinary artistic attempt to explore commonalities among complex systems across all scales and levels of hierarchy.The mounting of the fall 2003 exhibition at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC was co-sponsored by the Washington Center for Complexity and Public Policy.

8. Rosenberg, H. ( 1972), The De-de(inition of Art, (NYC: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc.), p. 166.

, KOAN-JEFFBAYSA

The human body is a slippery surface upon which discourses of race, class,gender, and sexuality are mediated, and thus a contested scientific, political, ethical, cultural, economic, and social site. Since human subjectivity and identity are linked to the changing perceptions of vision and visualization, we make and remake our visual experiences of the world within these different contexts. In diagnostic imaging,the areas of visualization, medicine, and technology come togethec Using the term "d1v1ning"synonymously with "diagnosing", the title Divining Fragments: Reconciling the Body refers to the history of diagnostics,from prognosticating over the internal organs of animals and ill gotten human specimens to visualizing the unseeable through dissection, microscopy, sonograms, x-rays, CAT, MRI and PET scans, including alternative techniques like phrenology, Kirlian and aura photography, as well as total body scanning from military applications.

Confronted with public exposure of our private anatomy we experience the loss of boundaries and control, evoking issues of physicality, vulnerability, and mortality. Through the imaging and re-imagining of the human body, these visual technologies have a profound impact on human self-understanding and behavior, often through implications outside of clinical application. They bring the relationships between health and knowledge under essential scrutiny questioning the way that meaning is negotiated. The manufacturers of these machines would have us believe that their technologies produce unbiased images that reveal truths about an individual's condition, but discrepancies exist between "machine vision" and "human vision." Much of the psychophysical data used in the past to engineer high-performance networked imaging systems is not consistent with the current knowledge of the human nervous system, and compensating enhancements of the image risk misinterpretation and the introduction of artifacts. The designs of informa-

tion transmission, storage, and processing devices need a better fit between opto-electronics and human nervous systems.

Historically, the partial or fragmented image suggested grief and nostalgia for the loss of a vanished totality and a utopian wholeness.In diagnostic imaging the body is examined in oetail, piecemeal and irreconciled, described in terms of"cuts" and "slices."The body in pieces, viewed as relics and synecdoches, constitute decons:ructed images of humans and problematize issuesof creation and re-creation, existence and mortality, integration and di'ssolution, especially when the images of the dematerialized body are solely transduced from digital code, existing as pure information.

Advanced medical imaging technologies came into clinical use in successivedecades: CAT in the 70s, MRI in the 80s, and PET in the 90s. Unlike CAT scans that rely on the summation of x-ray images and PET scans that rely on the decay of an injected radioactive pharmaceutical, MRI does not involve radiation, but instead uses a powerful magnet and the spin of hydrogen atoms in the body's water to generate images. It is astonishing to think of MRI and PET scans as the body's way of illuminating itself from within through subatomic particles.

Anatomical dissection has traditionally been the basis of studying the human body in health and disease despite the ban on human dissection that existed intermittently throughout the history of medicine. We acknowledge that DaVinci's detailed anatomical studies were done covertly, and paradoxically at a time when art and science were more closely aligned than today. When Andreas Vesalius published De Human, Corporis Fabnca in 1543 it had the same impact that modern medical imaging technology had on altering the entire episteme for viewing the human body. It changed human consciousness and created new anatomists.

©Mark Kessell, The Intersectionof Self.from the series PerfectSpecimens,2003, pigment prints on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag,40x30", CourtesyRicco/MarescoGallery,NYC

Mark Kessell's prints of a sagittally-sectioned head, The Intersection of Self (2003) and the pile of flayed, dissected arms, Continuing to Act (2003) refer to the pre-history of diagnostic imaging when the study of gross anatomy with its skills of dissection and direct visualization of the skeleton, organs, and tissues was one of the primary tools for training physicians in the detection of disease and normal variants. An amazing find by vintage photography dealer David Winter was a series of photograms, transparent sections of a human body made in a New York hospital in the I 920- I 930s. These images resemble but obviously predate CAT scans and were likely created from cryosections. They are unique because they show both bone and soft tissue in exquisite detail, especially muscles bundled in fascia. In the paramedical sagittal view, the headless body is abstracted and marked by dramatic dark diagonal stripes of the dense ribs.

When the field of medicine was transformed from a primarily tactile and aural diagnostic practice into a visual practice by the introduction of roentgen rays [x-rays], the medical body collided with the social body.This was in the late Victorian era when even the legs of furniture were being covered, and protests were launched about the indecency of this new viewing of the human body.The x-ray is a pivotal site of the exploration of medicine's visual knowledge and power. Before their full effects were discovered, x-rays were used in the treatment of acne and fluoroscopes were used in stores to aid in shoe fittings, putting people at increased risk for injury, mutations, and cancer from radiation exposure. While x-rays were used as part of the treatment regimen for cancer,for the Nazis and a basis for the military "death ray", they were used to implement involuntary sterilization. One of the first uses of medical imaging in contemporary art appeared in Rauschenberg's Booster ( 1967) consisting of five separate x-rays of the artist's body reassembled in a six

foot art piece. Artist David Webster makes work devoted to the physiologic and anatomic and includes sculptures, photographs, and paintings depicting histology, disease, and dysfunction. His series of mudras, [hand positions of the Buddha that constitute a highly stylized form of gestural communication] depicted in his light boxes Six Sacred Positions of Buddha ( 1995) denotes the Dharmachakra mudra, the setting the wheel of the teaching of the dharma into motion. Webster's x-ray images using his own hands in mudras are hauntingly poignant. for they penetrate his own physicality and vulnerability.As a result of an illnessthat required her to have multiple x-rays, Kunie Sugiura was inspired to create Rock( 1992/ I 996), a series of photograms assembled from collected x-rays of anonymous patients. Intrigued by her unfamiliarity with the people whose images she was handling, she was inspired by the connection between the medical assessment of the inner body parts and the inner aspects of her own artistic expression. Created in isolation in the darkroom, these photograms provided her with a rewarding link to society at large and a satisfyingmeans of recycling these discarded images. Postcard-sized photograms made from roentgenograms [photographs taken with x-rays] of skulls, chests, and spines are mounted in a found postcard holder, tethered tensely between the floor and ceiling at roughly an anatomical position.

The sonogram produces an image on the basis of sound waves reflected back to a source as a function of density and lucency of

organs, tissues,and fluid. It has found wide application in the assess-

ment of fetuses and pregnancies.Steve Miller created L'Origine du Monde ( 1994), a large silkscreen painting of a sonogram of twin girls. It references Gustave Courbet's infamous 1866 painting of the same name and is bracketed by a radar-like sweep of paint above and an EKG tracing below.The artist is deeply invested in the fields of science and technology, and his work draws upon iconic images,

cartography, and the medical body to address the ways that identity is constructed.

Taking cartography further are the pioneering works of Lilla LoCurto and William Outcault. Like phrenology yet unlike medical diagnostic imaging devices, their images are derived from only the surface of the artists' bodies, despite their resemblance to the "cuts" of internal scanning technologies. Their image-making process involves total body scans from military application modified by programs developed in conjunction with a computer scientist and two mathematicians to map the volumetric body in 2-D, the same goal of simultaneity sought by the Cubist artists. Their work, Storyboard#4_5 (2003), is a video still that depicts the same imaging technology. The angle of the "slice" is programmed to change, resulting in an astounding violent and poetic calligraphic image, just recognizable as the sectioned and unraveled bodies of the artists.

The online Visible Human Project, (www.nlm.gov/research/visible/ visible_human.html) sponsored by the National Library of Medicine, imaged an executed murderer's body and that of a female body using the full array of medical imaging technologies including transverse C~ MR, and cryosection images.The male was sectioned at one-millimeter intervals, the female at one third of a millimeter interval. The long-term goal of the project is to produce a system of knowledge that will transparently link visual knowledge forms to symbolic knowledge formats such as the names of body parts. In Untitled (2002), Patrick Martinez has taken the successive slices from the project and placed them in rapid sequence to create images of expanding and contracting abstractions, giving one the mesmerizing sensation of traveling through the body at great speed.

Justine Cooper's spectrally elegant sculpture Reach (2000) consists of planar sections of her hands and forearms from MRI data printed on stacked glass sheets re-assembled in 3-D.They impel the viewer to move around in space in order to reconcile the pieces back into a coherent whole. This mirrors the translation and deciphering processes of MRI while making the interstitial [between the cellular components of an organ or structure] areas the viewer's spaces.

The Cartesian split results from the collision of paradigms between faith and empiricism, and logic and intuition. This should be remembered when society is willing to abdicate rationality and responsibility to science and technology in the creation of machines that we are led to believe will tell us the truth about ourselves. One must recall that the original information produced by MRI is numerical, not visual, and that the process of reassembling the original body image can be a conflicted re-presentation. Metal in or on the body, breathing, and even the movement of blood can produce artifacts termed "cross talk" that appear as white dots created when the MRI "slices" are too close together. The very existence of these artifacts refute the notion of MRI making the body transparent and the image equivalent to the body since the production process involves the designation of twenty parameters, each of which affects how the final image appears and what it does and does not show. MRI images,reconstructed from pure information, should also be understood as knowledge that is influenced by social context and human decisions.They should not be separated from the discussions of the people and institutions that construct and control them.

Warren Neidich's indexical renderings of heads resemble CAT scans, but in actuality are photographs of light "paintings" depicting heads in profile that were part of his project studying prosopag-

nosia,the inability to recognize faces,including one's own. Robert #2 ( 1999-2002) is from the series Blanqui's Cosmology,which reminded the artist of phrenology, a respected hard science in the 19th century that analyzed character through the overall shape of and protuberances on the skull.When the same outlines were noted to resemble ring nebulae and other cosmologic references, Neidich's natural scientific curiosity and interest in systems formulated this creative bifid reading of his work.

At the other end of the magnifying lens is Jeff Wyckoff, a cancer and AIDS research scientist whose position allows him to work at the forefront of new technology. His piece Alpha-Omega (2003) presents a new view of cardiac and tumor tissues through multi photon microscopy, which sends a high wavelength infrared laser into a standard light microscope. When two beams join at the focal plane, the sum of the wavelengths create light at normal light microscope wavelengths with the advantage of deeper penetration and less phototoxicity. His imagery presents a menu of accompanying music created by four different composers in varying styles.

In the I 930's the Russiantechnician Semyon D. Kirlian discovered a means of recording film imprints of electromagnetic energy as unique fields of color in living organisms.These photographs may have been first applied as diagnostic tools or as aids to behavioral modification. Chrysanne Stathacos has traveled extensively to record the results of both psychic and somatic phenomena by making biofeedback plates into Polaroid portraits of mystics and sadhus that show surrounding clouds of brilliant varying colors. In her piece Aura Grid (2003) the artist leaves all interpretations open-ended.

Cultural critics John Berger and Susan Sontag have pointed out that there are dire consequences in equating photos with real. Medical

images circulate similarly within this belief system and are often thought to be equivalent to the bodies represented within them. Realizing that MRI images are only re-presentations and partial truths empowers us to recognize the political, social, and economic factors that affect the interpretation of these images.

The deployment of medical imaging pictures by contemporary visual artists refiects the innovative and alternative perspectives that art often offers to science, while acknowledging that both art and science are investigated by social beings within social contexts.

- Kaan-Jeff Baysa,2003

Dr. Koan-Jeff Baysa is a curator, writer, practicing physician, and alumnus of the Whitney Independent Study Program in Curatorial Studies. A contributing writer for NY Arts Magazine and online for Flavorpi/1,his writing appears in gallery and museum catalogs and medical-science publications. Dr. Baysa is on the boards ofThe Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, Art and Science Collaborations Inc., Art Omi International Residency Program, Cross Path Culture, and Wetlab.

Divining Fragments: Reconciling the Body, originated as an exhibition curated by Kaan-Jeff Baysa, at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, November I - December 21, 2003

SELECTIONSBY SARAHHASTED MANN,

This year's call for entries produced an eclectic group of images,from the traditional - an old friend, to the conceptual - a very new acquaintance. Many of the photographers created fantasy worlds that became interesting journeys for me to far away places, another country, or perhaps a different era. Photography has always allowed one to daydream, imagine other lives - the great photographs actually take you there.

- Sarah Hasted Mann, 2003

PINEWOODS I The Pinewoods photographs are a product of a protracted walk in the Cape Cod National Seashore pine barrens. I've tracked the light as it falls on pitch pines and the common hair grass surrounding them.

Jean Giono once said, "True mysteries are hidden 1nthe light." My effort here has all been about trying to surprise some of those mysteries.

EDER (NewYork, NY)

SENSE OF HERSELF I I use photography as a medium to explore notions of popular culture, female identity, and kitsch. Senseof Herself,which begun in 1995, is an ongoing project consisting of over 450 images of objects -ranging from a rainbow sprinkled cupcake, a bright pink plastic toy bat, to a can ofTab soda, a Jimi Hendrix album, and a package of ground meat. In its totality Senseof Herselfnotes the comolexities of meaning and cultural value in the Western world. On a personal level,this project defines and redefines who I am, who I was, and the shape of my life to come.

SALT HARVEST:BONA/RE I My background as a landscape architect informs my vision as a photographic artist. I am especially interested in vernacular and farm architecture, and my photographs explore the notion of cultivation.The marks we make and the structures we build when we cultivate our lands can be at once both beautiful and terrifying, as they are on the island of Bonaire.

Commercial salt production on the island was once achieved through slave labor.The slave huts from the sixteenth century still stand in the midst of the massive machinery of contemporary salt production.The diminutive whitewashed huts conduct a silent dialogue with the giant mounds of salt that await shipment from the stark, windswept island.This series of images records the salt harvest in the late afternoon, when the harvest machinery is stilled and the sunlight and trade winds are at their sharpest.

MARY MATTINGLY (Brooklyn, NY)

As I traveled around the country I noticed that everywhere looked like my hometown - the same place, repeated, with barren space in between.These places felt both eerie and comforting.This was a starting point. I began to create a narrative around the places I photographed; what goes on in these spaces that are visually redundant? How do people function? What will people's reality be like fifty years from now? Do people become as uniform as the spaces they inhabit, or do they become more isolated, more nomadic?

The imposed narrative tries to answer these questions and the

photographs give in to my fears and apprehensions about the future and what it will be like if big business continues to dictate decisions about environment, health, and more. Abandoned landscapes that were created for peoples' use take on lives of their own when the occupants of yesterday no longer have a need for interaction. When people finally decide to leave their estranged dwellings they wear suits that will allow them to navigate through non-descript places that now have become absent of life.The suits will substitute the ideas of Home, and people begin to roam and become nomads. Underpasses and parking lots become the new public meeting grounds.The population starts to build walls around areas to keep themselves safe from rising sea levels.I want the photographs to allude to a fiction that is not far off.

(Beacon, NY)

ME.NSCHE.NKUNDE. I The true subject of my portraits may be the question of representation. I specialize in photographs that resemble paintings by Old Masters. My work captures the lighting, composition, and mood of Renaissance portraits. My inspiration comes from Leonardo Da Vinci, Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt, and Vermeer - painters famous for linking beauty and psychological insight - at least according to Jakob Burckhardt, the 19th century Swiss art historian responsible for establishing the Renaissance as the beginning of modern aesthetic sensibility. Burckhardt may have been right, but it is also true that his ideas on the Renaissancetell us as much about his 19th century culture as they do about early modern painters.

In my portraits I try to show the ambiguity of historical portraiture. I achieve a double irony: first, my photographs portray persons, that is, contemporary people posing for my pictures; and second, my photographs portray paintings. My art thus reflects on the very essence of portraiture: what is a unique person, and what a unique likeness7

LISA ROBINSON Uackson Heights, NY)

SNOWBOUND I Having grown up in the South, where the summers are long and the winters are chilly, I could only imagine a world that turned white and, seemingly,magical, with the first snowfall.Though an adult now, I still see snowscapes with a childlike wonder. A blanket of white powder muffles the noise of daily life and reveals the balance we are capable of finding with nature.These images are my nostalgic glimpses at a world that, though fleeting, does exist In the snowy canyons of our own backyards,we may still find simple beauty and pure enchantment.

noted books

Mona Kuhn, with photographs by Mona Kuhn, 2002, soft cover, black & white photographs. Donated by the artist.

Time of Change Civil Rights Photographs /961-1965, Bruce Davidson, St. Ann's Press, Los Angles, Ca; 2002, hard cover, black & white photographs.

E.ast I 00th Street, Bruce Davidson, St. Ann's Press, Los Angles, Ca; 2003, hard cover, black & white photographs.

Australia's Flying Doctors, Roger McDonald, Fremantle Arts Centre Press in Association with Sandpiper Press, North Fremantle, Australia; 2002 hard cover, color photographs.

Anceax's Glasses: Anthropological Photography Since I 980, Linda Roodenburg, Waanders Uigevers, Zwolle and Rijksmeseum, Leiden, Netherlands; 2002, soft cover, black & white photographs.

A Kind of History, Mark Goodman, Marker Books, San Francisco, CA; 1999, hard cover, black & white photographs. Donated by the photographer.

Structures of Nature: Photographs by Andreas Feininger, N. Elizabeth Schlatter, University of Richmond Museums, Richmond Va; 2002, soft cover, black & white photographs

The Villas of Palladio, Philip Trager, Floyd A. Yearout, Weston Mass; 1986, hard cover, black & white photographs. Donated by the artist.

Blue Print, photographs by Zeva Oelbaum, Rizzoli International Publications, New York, NY; 2002, hard cover, color photographs. Donated by the artist.

EDON ATWORK

Avedon at Work in the American West with photographs & text by Laura Wilson & Richard Avedon, published by the University ofTexas Press,2003

For anyone interested in the human condition and the photographic process Avedon at Work is a fascinating and unique look into Richard Avedon's creation of in the American West and the people who make up the project.

In 1979 the Amon Carter Museum in Dallas,TX, commissioned Avedon, then a photographer renowned for his images of celebrities and beauties in NYC, to create a portrait of 'ordinary people' of the American West. The work was exhibited at the Museum in 1985 and accompanied by a book of the same title. Twenty-five years after the project began, Laura Wilson's newly published account enriches and illuminates Avedon's groundbreaking project with the same kind of poignancy that defined the original work.

During the six years of its creation, Wilson worked with Avedon on In the American West, traveling in a Suburban through 17 states

Flowers In Shadow a Photographer Rediscovers a Victorian Botanical Journal, photographs by Zeva Oelbaum, essays by Susan Orlean and Sara Stein, Rizzoli International Publications,New York, NY; 2002, hard cover, black & white photographs. Donated by the artist.

Post Cards of The Night Views of American Cities, John A. Jakie, Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, NM; 2003, hard cover, color photographs.

American Route 66 Home on The Road, Jane Bernard and Polly Brown, Museum of New Mexico Press,Santa Fe, NM; 2003, hard cover, color and black & white photographs.

Rocky Schenck, Photographs, introduction by Cor.inie Todd, University ofTexas Press,Austin.TX; 2003 hard cover, black & white photographs.

Avedon at Work in the American West, photographs and text by Laura Wilson and Richard Avedon, forward by Larry McMurty, University ofTexas Press,Austin,TX; 2003 hard cover, black & white photographs.

Shelby Lee Adams - Appalachian Lives, introduction by Vicki Goldberg, University Press of Mississippi,Jackson, MS; 2003, hard cover, black & white photographs.

Rivers of Life, Southwest Alaska, The Last Great Salmon Fishery, photographs by Robert Glenn Ketchum, essay by Bruce Hampton, Aperture Foundation, NYC; 200 I, hard cover, color photographs. Donated by the artist.

by

from the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains, and Central Texas to the Sierra Nevada. Presenting Wilson's own narrative stories, journal entries, and photographs along with Avedon's original portraits and letters from those involved, Avedon at Work tells the story of a visionary artist connecting with strangers, coal miners, drifters, ranchers, inmates, Loretta Lyn Fan Club founders, and factory workers. Wilson's compelling writing and images take you on the road and behind the scenes to meet the hard working 'uncelebrated' people engaged along the way. Perhaps even more captivating and significant to this account is that Wilson reveals how one of the most important artists of our time "brings art into being", including Avedon's working methods, creative choices, inspirations, how he approached potential subjects, and how he connected and created intimacy with the people he photographed, which is finally one of the most moving aspects of this record.

To quote Wilson, this book is really about "just how imaginative, unrelenting, and brave an artist must be" - and how brave and inventive we all must be when faced with some of the heartbreaking forms our lives may take. Avedon at Work is an extraordinary tribute to the creative process and this great image-maker

- Kate Menconeri

It is in the details such as a sound or echo, the fragile, luminous, flourish-like gestures left behind, that meaning is contained. My interest is in the process of memory and for me this process begins with these marginal elements and the associationsthey help to recall. I use objects, fragments of text and ephemera to symbolize my experiences and my desire to keep these memories close.

Diagrams or illustrations that once served as explanation to the phenomena of nature serve as the background and provide a structure for the objects in the photographs. I work intuitively using visual clues such as repeated shapes and patterns as connectors of all the details in the final images.When these elements are successfully combined, the imagery resonates with other memories and dreams.

The warm transparent palate of teastained photographs and the dark obscure palate of photograms aide in placing meaning back into the realm of memory and the unreal. encouraging reinterpretation.

JAMES REEDER studied Photography and Graphic Design at Pacific Union College and independently with the likes of Ruth Bernhard. Many professionals and curators have noted his talent and his work has been in exhibits at the Paxton Gate Gallery in San Francisco, the Napa Valley Museum, the San Diego Art Institute, the Society for Contemporary Photography in KansasCity, the Barrett House Galleries in Poughkeepsie, and the Center for Photography at Woodstock. He currently lives and works in Napa, California.

In Light artists are selected from the Center's Slide Registry - a slide archive of contemporary photography, mixed media, and digital imagery. It provides a bridge between artists, curators, collectors, educators, and the Center; making contemporary work easy to access-by appointment Wednesday to Sunday noon to 5pm.

PHOTOVISION

portfolios • reviews

darkroom • technique alternative processes

Color and b&w photography

Available by subscription or at better bookstands everywhere

I year (6 issues) for $26. 95 or 2 years (12 issues) for $45. 95. You may order a subscription with a credit card by calling 719/256-5099, or online at www. photovi s ion magazine. com