Daniel Traub's portrait of two boys who approached him while he was out shooting in North Philadelphia.

The collection is an amazing thing, something you can visit both in the library, and in cyberspace. And people who cherish it formed the Friends of PIX to help maintain it, and they are behind the auction. So hurry up and go bid and buy and you can figure you’ve done your good deed for the week!!!

Jeffrey Stockbridge's portrait of two girls, in the exhibit at the Free Library.

Today is also the last day of this year’s PIX art show–Documentary PIX: Philadelphia, A Century of Change. Prints and Pictures puts on a show, talk and fundraiser each year to not only raise money but to honor the late Robert F. Looney, the collection’s curator from 1963 to 1986. I went to the opening event at the Free Library about a month ago to both see the show and hear the panel discussion on my favorite photo question, what’s real?

The panelists were eminent photo critic A.D. Coleman; independent arts writer Nancy Brokaw; and documentary photographer Daniel Traub. Many of the main themes each presenter talked about during the panel discussion were crystallized in the Q&A afterwards.

Laurence Salzmann's image of 10th and Market Street

Someone in the audience was worried about reliability of documentary work in the age of PhotoShop.  A.D. Coleman, who was the first photo critic at the New York Times, said he didn’t think PhotoShop was making that much of a difference. “We have photos from the Civil War that were changed,” said Coleman. “On some level, the power of documentary has always depended on the photographer saying to us, I saw this, this happened. Goya wrote this on some of his Disasters of War–’I saw this.’”

Nancy Brokaw, who teaches at the University of the Arts, agreed: “It’s always been an interpretation. …Anything that purports to be a document is always a flawed document. It has just gotten to be easier to do.”

And documentary photography Daniel Traub said it’s all a matter of degree vis a vis the changes that you make with PhotoShop. It’s the difference between adjusting the color and putting something in or taking something out. “You need to have clarity about what you are doing.” He cited photographer Edgar Martins, who denied his manipulations of photos that ran in the New York Times, as an example of what not to do. Embarrassment all around.

(Traub during the panel discussion had also talked about how the process of taking photographs helps him figure out what feels real to himself. It took him several years in China before he figured out that the theme of self-reinvention was an important factor in his photographic choices in a country that has thrown out its history of  language and culture.)

Pixel manipulation is only one of the ways a lie can be created in photography. Coleman cited Robert Doisneau‘s kiss in front of the Hotel De Ville, which stood for a half a century as a wonderful picture of romance in Paris. Then the truth came out. It was staged, with two paid actors feigning a kiss. “He didn’t change a pixel, didn’t change a silver particle. It’s the identical physical thing. But the response that I have to it has changed completely. It has gone from sociology to theater. I now have to suspend my disbelief, which is what I do with theater.”

Vincent D. Feldman, Ridge Avenue Farmers Market, 1995, shows a once fabulous city now on the skids.

In answer to a question about beauty in Picasso’s Guernica still successfully communicating war, Brokaw said, “You don’t want to make ugly pictures. …If you take beautiful pictures of a disaster and that’s where you stop [at the beauty, with no intent of fixing a wrong], you’re in some decadent space where I don’t want to live.”

Coleman chimed in on Brokaw’s point by paraphrasing a Pablo Neruda poem on the effect of bombing during the Spanish Civil War: “The blood of the children on the street was like the blood of the children in the streets. …Sometimes you need to restrain the poetics in order to let the brute facts speak for themselves. Sometimes you need to enhance things to get it across.”

Joseph Labolito, ysc, womens floor, Archival Color Print, 2007

After the discussion, most of the audience wandered out for a meal and a look at the exhibit, which features documentary photography from the Free Library collection of Philadelphia–images from the turn of the 20th century, images from the 1950s, and then images from today (more or less) by 15 contemporary documentary photographers.

Karen Lightner, ysc demolition, pigment print, 2011. You can see the mens and womens floors, with color coding!

Curated by Drexel photography Professor Blaise Tobia and Photo Review Editor Stephen Perloff, the exhibit captures the civic pride and optimism embodied in the photos of the previous century, such as Frank Taylor’s bird’s-eye-view of the city from the Bell Telephone Building, or the photos of building the Schuylkill Expressway and the Oxford Circle area. The unblinking, often unsentimental work of the last decade stands in sharp contrast, from Harvey Finkle’s sympathetic photo of a welfare-cuts protest to Sandy Sorlien’s vines overgrowing the decrepit Eastern State Penitentiary to Zoe Strauss’ portraits of people living on the edge.

My favorite grouping in the show was a pair of pictures by Joseph Labolito opposite a photo by Karen Lightner.

Joseph Labolito, ysc, mens floor, Archival Color Print, 2007

Lightner, who for many years was curator of the Prints and PIctures collection at the Free Library, had commissioned Labolito to take pictures documenting Philadelphia for the collection. His two photos of the Youth Study Center’s womens (pink) floor and mens (blue) floor capture the dehumanizing architecture of the building before it came down. The baby sex-coded colors were almost surreal. Lightner’s more recent picture of the partially destroyed building also catches the pink and blue floors. What a pairing–and kudos to the curators for this!

Other contemporary artists in the show are: Jim Abbott, Noah Addis, Michael Bucher, John Dowell, Jr., Daniel Lobdell, Zoe Strauss, and John Woodin. You can see many of the images on line here.

Oh yes, and don’t forget to be a citizen and put in a bid.

Our series sponsor is Fleisher Art Memorial.

Daniel Traub’s photographs of overgrown lots in North Philadelphia where rowhouses once stood have a mournful feel.  In Traub’s photos, on view at the Print Center until March 5, indomitable nature grows up tall where people once lived.  But the works are not so much about the man-nature struggle in the built environment.  They’re more about entropy and the way things are, the rub of time and place.  Traub spent the last nine years in China where he observed the building boom of gated communities rising next to shanty towns.  He talked with us about Philadelphia and China and about growing up with parents who are both activists.

Daniel Traub at the Print Center after our interview

First, a short sample from the interview; and below that the full 15-minute episode.

Download audio file (danieltraubpromo.mp3)
27-second Daniel Traub sample

Download audio file (danieltraubfinal.mp3)
Right click to download full 15-minute interview with Daniel Traub

This episode is edited by Peter Crimmins. The music is by Eric Biondo. Thanks to the Knight Foundation and our series sponsor, Fleisher Art Memorial, for their support of this project.  You can subscribe to artblog radio on iTunes. And thanks to our partner WHYY, which shares artblog radio episodes on their community news site NewsWorks.org.

27-second Daniel Traub sample

Daniel Traub, Tree, North Fifteenth and West Boston Street, North Philadelphia, 2010 Archival pigment print 47 1/4” x 40”, Edition 1 of 6; image courtesy The Print Center

The exhibition includes eight photographs from Traub’s Lots series.

Traub has a life-long connection to these images, all dated 2010. His father, David Traub, is an architect who is dedicated to the preservation of historic and vernacular buildings throughout Philadelphia. Lily Yeh, his mother, is the founder of The Village Arts and Humanities, an arts organization known for its public art and renewal of spaces in North Philadelphia.

Visually, Traub’s work is dramatic. The sizes of the photographs are large enough to surround the viewer. The central placement of the lots in the photographs causes the viewer to immediately confront them without any visual barriers.

Traub uses a large format film camera for this work. He scans the 4” x 5” negatives and prints the photographs digitally. According to Print Center Curator John Caperton, “Daniel shoots on large format film because it is unmatched in terms of crispness and quality (still better than digital at this point). Most photographers working in color print digitally these days, which does also allow for large sizes.”

These photographs follow the philosophy behind the Japanese art of Wabi-Sabi – Traub’s work argues that there is beauty in decay and death. Peeling paint, broken windows, worn fabric, plywood, and litter all make a strong image formally. They offer a variety of unusual shapes, striking color combinations, patterns and textures. Since the lots once had buildings on them, or are sandwiched between two houses, it is easy to imagine them as interior spaces. In this situation, the landscape has come inside the space where there was once a house and viewers are reminded of the fragility of our living conditions and our connection to nature.

Spaces that seem dead at first glance are active – nature has taken over. The photographs are full of movement in the visual sense of the word. In “Lot, North Twenty Fourth and West Master Street, North Philadelphia,” ivy and lush, dark green trees roll forward in waves from the back of the lot. In “Tree, North Fifteenth and West Boston Street, North Philadelphia” (see above), the ivy and plant-life from the lot swallow the houses that border it. While this image shows one of the worst scenes in the exhibition, it is also one of the most striking images formally. Warm reds, oranges, yellows, and browns compliment the cool green areas taking over the lot and buildings. The brick, stone, wooden panels, glass, trash, and plant-life bring a variety of textures and patterns to the image. It is sad to think that these once majestic houses are now in such a state of disrepair that they are returning to nature. Yet in the decay of these lots and surrounding buildings, growing plants and trees remind viewers that revitalization is always possible.

Daniel Traub. Lot, North Twenty Fourth and West Master Street, North Philadelphia. 2010. Archival pigment print. 40” x 47 ¼”, Edition 1 of 6.

When asked whether Traub hopes to inspire social activism through these images, or whether he is more concerned with the formal and conceptual sides of his works, Caperton had this to say:

“On the one hand, I don’t think Daniel is trying to explicitly state his agenda in terms of social activism in these works. That said, while they are certainly formal explorations of space and form, he also very intentionally chose to document buildings and communities that are going through changes that are, in some cases, devastating.”

Traub chooses to title his pieces after the location of each of the Lots photographs. This choice in titling shows that Traub cares that these photographs serve as a sort of documentation. He wants the viewers to know that these are real spaces at a particular moment in time, and they are located in North and West Philadelphia. Shot during the day, these photographs have a cool, white light that clearly shows these lots as they are – nothing is idealized. These aspects of his work add an element of authenticity.

Daniel Traub, Lot, Cecil B. Moore Avenue near North Marston Street, North Philadelphia, 2010 Archival pigment print 40” x 47 1/4”, Edition 1 of 6; image courtesy The Print Center

Traub uses row homes, sidewalks, and wires to frame the lots within the photographs. These frames reference the grid that occurs on flat rectangular formats, and therefore remind the viewer that the photograph is a flat object, rather than a window to a three-dimensional space. The frames in these images do not define the limits of what the viewer is looking at, but rather act as an extension of the lots. These are images of visual fields, not of objects against backgrounds.

This body of work has ties to post-minimalism because it focuses on process, contingency, chance, and the visual field. Traub’s decision to photograph vacant lots in Philadelphia was also a decision to leave a number of things about his images to chance. It also focuses more on the process of shooting photographs because of the specific parameters he chose for each of his photos to have in terms of composition, light, format and subject. Photography as a medium also invites chance into the equation – especially when film is involved. The differences between each lot were contingent upon their unique history, not any inventions set up by Traub. But unlike post-minimalist artists such as Andy Goldsworthy, Traub’s work does have a finished product – the framed photographs hanging in the Print Center.

The Print Center’s decision to show this work in their first-floor gallery is excellent because as soon as the viewer walks outside he/she is surrounded by row homes and brick townhouses that are very similar to the houses in Traub’s photographs. The Print Center is in walking distance from some of the locations Traub shot, such as the tree by the intersection of North Fifteenth and West Boston Street, and the lot on North Nineteenth Street near Cumberland Street in North Philadelphia. In this exhibition, Traub simultaneously shows the beauty, poverty, and potential in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods.

The exhibition runs through March 5.

Kyle Ferino, Death of a Salesman, 2008, chromogenic print, 21 x 21 inches

Most of these photos depict ambiguous, uncomfortable scenarios of a damaged world. Kyle Ferino’s Death of a Salesman depicts a dishevelled, shoeless man in a suit under an overpass, draped like a river god. The scenario is a kind of netherworld glade, hidden from respectable eyes. That hidden world, a disreputable Eden, made me think of Jeff Wall. There’s a mix of magic, threat and myth–the powerful scariness of someone who has become an outsider. Or maybe the subject is nothing more than a homeless guy in a safe corner.

Xiomara Benavides, Don Hilario, 2009, archival inkjet print, 16.5 x 21.75 inches

Xiomara Benavides’ Don Hilario is filled with questions. Was this a photoshoot portrait with backdrop in which the edges of the backdrop show to exhibit the artifice? And what about the chalked words on the ground? Is this crazy? Is he crazy? Are these his words? Yet Don Hilario looks so dignified, even in his jeans, sitting on a flimsy garden chair in a garden with a phony backdrop. Is the garden his? If not, whose? Whose backdrop is it, anyway? The image brings up all the early 20th Century immigrant photo portraits,  with serious, dignified subjects posed in front of a pictorial backdrop. The color, the jeans, and the buildings peeking out from behind the backdrop are incontrovertible clues that this photo is not from a time past.

Felicia Perretti, Car Seat Fight, 2009, archival inkjet print, 20 x 20 inches

Snapshots may be the style of Felicia Perretti’s photos, but her on-the-fly photos are not exactly family vacations. Car Seat Fight, framed by a car window, shows a wailing child being roughly transported by a woman clearly irritated. It’s unclear who started the fight, and it’s unclear if the child is merely being moved or is about to catch hell on the side of the road. The view from inside the car suggests there’s a player in the scenario who is inside. The side of the road is a snatch of besmirched nature, a transitory world beyond the rules of orderly gardens and the home front. The photo becomes an emotionally fraught moral tale in which fairness and justice come under scrutiny.

Phil Jackson, Davis with Deer, Upstate NY 2007, 2007, Chromogenic print, 30 x 40

And speaking of roadside moral tales, Phil “Filthy” Jackson’s road kill photo with what I take to be a distraught Davis, may in fact be a hunter and his prey. Either way, Bambi is under threat from the human race. As in all these photos above, Eden is lost.

Daniel Traub, Tree, North West Philadelphia 2008, 2008, archival inkjet print, 20 x 24 inches

The Eden theme comes up in a couple of photos by Daniel Traub, but in Traub’s cause, Eden isn’t so much lost as aspired to. His Tree, North West Philadelphia 2008, is a scrappy survivor on a trash strewn rowhouse front lawn, nature’s toehold in an unwelcoming environment. Traub’s Two boys, North Philadelphia 2008, shows two slightly uncomfortable, vulnerable youths, one hiding behind his hoodie with his legs in a posturing wide stance, one with his hands clasped shyly in front and his legs close together, in front of a weedy array of growth. Their young good looks also suggest survival, as does the tree, and the weedy Eden behind them tells pretty much the same story. (Traub also has an exhibit up at the Art Institute of Philadelphia until Oct. 16).

Sarah Moore, Anterior Future, 2008, archival inkjet print, 32 x 26 inches

Formal issues also caught my eye–Sarah Moore’s surprising framing of shots–she splits a woman’s head in two in the diptych, Fall, which also is about textures of a scarf and the landscape–and a sort of Eden. Again using a surprising split to very different effect, Moore shoots the back window of a car in Anterior Future, putting the humans only partially in the picture, with their matching herringbone coats (are they friends or mother and daughter?).  The suggestion of time past/road travelled, out the back window, colors the story of the two women and their related coats.

Matthew Thomas Cianfrani, Contemplating charred hotel on cloudless day in Chaoyang District, 2009, archival inkjet print on rice paper, 20 x 60 inches

The rice paper surface of Matthew Thomas Cianfrani’s Contemplating charred hotel on cloudless day in Chaoyang District suggests China as much as the title does. The atmospheric photo, with its sense of disintegration and insubstantiality rings true to its message. The domineering form of the destroyed building is far from the gritty urban environments of the other cityscapes in this exhibit. The photo communicates its own sort of horror and regret.

Hannah Price, Twin Day, Fall 2008, archival inkjet print, 24 x 20 inches

Some of the smaller photos in the show are given short shrift, hung too close together.   But all in all, this is a terrific show and a great beginning. Others in the exhibit are Martin Buday, Christopher Gianunzio, Jaime Alvarez, Samantha Sheehan, Chad States, Tom Goodman, Danielle Bogenhagen, Gene Smirnov, Bob Myaing, Elyse Derosia, Hannah Price, DM Witman, Kelsey Johnson, and Joshua Lanzara. The exhibit was juried by Ariel Shanberg, executive director of the Center for Photography at Woodstock. Woodstock! …speaking of metaphors for Eden lost!

The exhibit is up to Nov. 29.