Donald E. Camp Captain, Front Waiter and Back Waiter / Kisha Picore (from Dust Shaped Hearts series), 2007 Photographic Casein Monoprint

The show’s initial foray into face-ness — the first thing you see when you enter the gallery, is a wall of predominantly sober, sad and death-imbued images.  Donald Camp’s ghostly photo with casein and raw earth pigment,  ”Captain” — like all the artist’s works — resembles the “Shroud of Turin.”  The grainy, close-cropped image of a man staring up at you over the rim of his glasses looks as if it was transmitted by magic from the underworld to the surface of the paper.  Phillip Toledano’s dad, in his digital C-print “me and dad” is an elderly man who is close to death.

Neil Winokur Andy Warhol, 1982 Cibachrome Print

There’s a gaunt and haunted-looking Andy Warhol, pictured by Neil Winoker in a 1982 Cibachrome print, whose blue background is eerily evocative of the void. The wall’s anchor piece is Andrea Modica’s platinum/palladium print of a skull sitting on what looks like a corrugated cardboard table top.  The picture’s title, “Colorado Springs, CO (A15, Male, 56 years old)” implies that the skull is a specimen of some unknown and unnamed person.  And it also implies, of course, the truth that in death all skulls are pretty much the same.

Richard Renaldi Cory, 2008 Gelatin Silver Contact Print

But the large show has ups, too, as well as downs.  Even this wall has a playful image, and several that are lyrical without being mournful. A Facebook-like profile photo of “Grant,” a smiling young man by Davin Youngs is positively ebullient.  Richard Renaldi’s “Cory” almost jumps off the wall.  The small gelatin silver print of a young man in profile radiates a life lived intensely.  Paul Cava’s pigment print, “Denise (New Mexico),” and Jason Robinette’s archival pigment print, “Untitled 13,” both exude yearning and old fashioned beauty.

Caitlin Teal Price Leslie, 2010 Archival Pigment Print

There’s plenty more in the exhibit, lots of it magical.  Like Caitlin Price’s “Leslie,” an archival pigment print that captures a women in a forbidding space — a dark shadowy zone under a cloverleaf highway overpass — her face illuminated by an oval of bright light that catches only her facial features as she stares down and away. It’s a weird and cinematic portrayal, whose celestial beam of light is echoed in Modica’s “Oneonta Yankee, Kent Wallace,” a Platinum/Palladium Contact Print, another face lit by a mystery light.

George Krause Waitress, Anguila (from Sfumato series), 2003 Archival Pigment Print

Whether intended or not, the wide range of shooting styles and approaches  – from gelatin silver prints by Yuichi Hibi to screen grabs of a web project by Jen Davis — conveys the vibrancy of photography today.  It’s a tool able to flex to just about any practitioner’s needs. Liz Rideal makes Chromogenic prints from photobooth pictures.  Her two portraits, one a man, one a woman, depict the subjects’ heads peeping through slits in two vertical-striped cloths.  The element of fun that usually accompanies photobooth shots is undercut by the serious expression on the man’s face and the open-eyed innocence of the woman; both become sad clowns trapped in all the stripes.

David Graham Northern Liberties, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2006 Chromogenic Print

David Graham’s C-print portrait of Elijah Wood is not really a portrait but a street scene of two wheat-pasted posters for the movie “Everything Is Illuminated.”  Time and weather have eaten away at the posters, but like the “Picture of Dorian Gray,” Wood’s youthful looks remain intact.

Henry Horenstein Scout, 2009 Archival Pigment Print 10 x 15 inches

The show is a summer refresher—on a warm day the gallery’s cool ambiance is welcoming and the faces totally engaging.  Here’s a winning double header — pair this photo exhibit with a trip to the Art Museum’s “Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus.”  Then think about how photography has stolen portraiture – and faces — from contemporary painting.

Read this at Philly Weekly.

“About Face” to Sept. 10.  Gallery 339, 339 S. 21st St. 215 731 1530. www.gallery339.com

All images courtesy of Gallery 339.

Donald E. Camp, Man Who Hears Music, Andre Raphael Smith, Earth pigment and casein mono-print, 22” X 30”, 2006

I don’t want to say much more about the ideas in there (so many more I can hardly believe it) because if you go, the show will reveal itself to you in ways you won’t expect. And you should go.

Here are some more reasons why:

Photographer Donald Camp’s elemental, giant portraits of African American men dominate the show. If you have never seen these one-offs printed with earth and casein, you owe it to yourself to see them now. These portraits tell a tale of self-invention and gravitas that overwhelms the popular culture’s focus on African American men as gangsters and gangstas. Camp is a former photographer for the Philadelphia Bulletin who manages to indict even the crappy newsprint and its quick and dirty printing methods in these masterpieces of material and social depth.

James Mundie, Portrait of a Big-fingered Boy, Pen and ink, 8” x 6”, 2004

James G. Mundie’s small ink drawings of circus freaks–another group of outsiders reimagined, dignified, and preserved by portraits that borrow art historical compositions–stand up well, even next to Camp’s gorgeous ultra closeups. Mundie and Camp are both on a mission to reestablish into the mainstream the rejected, without tampering with the subjects’ self-images and their control of their own destiny.

Matthew Fisher, The Ocean, Pencil on paper, 10 1/4” x 9 1/8”, 2009

Two other drawing wizards–Matt Fisher and Rob Matthews–are still more reasons to see this exhibit. Fisher’s 18th Century soldiers are vulnerable and awkward, even when they cavort or daydream. The delicate drawings are everyman in costume, playing a role and yet not quite inhabiting the clothes,  adult boys who are confused about how they could possibly be who they are and where they are–models of self-doubt as modern as they are antique. The deadpan drawings are delightful and quite like the soldiers–dreamy storybook figures that leap off the page into your heart.

Rob Matthews, Steve, Graphite on paper, 9” X 9”, 2008

In contrast to Fisher’s figures who exist as universal soldiers of any time, Rob Matthews’ portraits are documents of this time–ordinary family and friends depicted with art historical allusions that preserve the subjects in the continuum of history, that place them in that collective memory that erases most mortals in a couple of generations. Matthews said he thinks of these as memorials, and therefore has written on the back the subjects names and particulars. The context of this show highlights all the thinking and complexity that has gone into this seemingly deadpan take on social circumstances that nearly consume individual identity.

Joshua Mosley, Commute, Still image from mixed media animation, 2003

Out on his own moon, Joshua Mosley’s claymation cyber-video Commuter uses the cell phone as the opening metaphor for journeying beyond concrete physical circumstances to some place in the imagination or the mind. The mind’s world here is futuristic, an adventure down the wormhole of technology where physical and genetic facts seem almost beside the point! The journey is playful, defying nature, gravity, and other limits–and highlighting how technology is a magical mystery tour where we can escape who we really are where we really are.

Laura Graham, Forrest, 40” x 60” inches, Archival pigment print from 4x5 film, 2006

In the context of these complex works, Laura Graham’s large, introspective photos of women seem too large, their hints of psychological depth and mythic underpinnings not fully realized.

Beautiful Human, curated by Shelley Spector, is up to Oct. 9, 2009.Bea

Donald Camp, Woman who Writes, Lorraine Carey from the Dust Shaped Hearts series

When Photography and Printmaking Collide opened last weekend at the Free Library of Philadelphia; it’s on view through June 27. The exhibition was organized in conjunction with an annual fundraising event put on by the Friends of the Print and Picture Department. The show features artists who use prints and photography together to create their imagery.

Allan Edmunds, From the Family Album Series

There are some beautiful works in the exhibition including Andy Warhol’s Jacqueline Kennedy II, 1966 which is printed with a mesmerizing, silvery lavender color. I’m always a sucker for Allen Edmunds’ prints and there are a couple of examples from his Family Album Series in the show. There are also several examples of Donald Camp’s large and powerful portraits printed with casein and earth pigments in a way that lets the colors soak into the paper making the image and the paper one.

The works in the show are by local artists supplemented by examples from the Print and Picture Departments holdings. Other artists in the show include Virgil Marti, Lois Johnson, Teresa Jaynes, Paul Cava and others. The exhibition was co-curated by Karen Lightner and Patricia M. Smith.

Lois Johnson, City Hall Silkscreen, 1988

Each year the Friends host this fundraising event in honor of Robert Looney, who was head of the Print and Picture Department for 23 years, and who amassed a large (the collection totals about 750,000 works in all) and important collection of works on paper for the Library. It’s an amazing collection, and free and open to the public; truly an undervalued resource in the city. The Friends’ yearly fundraising event always includes a silent auction and subscription reception, and also a lecture or panel discussion. The silent auction this year was great and unsold items can still be perused and purchased through the website at: www.friendsofpix.org/auctionitems. Works by Martha Madigan, Lois Johnson, Reinhold Edelschein, Rebecca Hoenig, and others were still available at the time this was written.

The panel discussion

Andy Warhol, Jacqueline Kennedy II, 1966

The collections of the Print and Picture Department include examples of works on paper from Philadelphia in the Early Republic, when the city was considered the “Athens of America,” and was the artistic and economic center of a new and booming print industry. It was this history that was summoned in the panel discussion that kicked off the event. If Philadelphia was once the artistic and cultural center of the nation, where are we now? And, more importantly, where are we going?

“The State of the Arts in Philadelphia: A Conversation about the Present and Future of the Visual Arts in Philadelphia” was the title of the panel and speakers included Douglass Paschal, Curator of Collections at the Woodmere Museum, Jim Cotter, Arts and Culture Editor at WRTI FM, Ben Olshin, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and History at the University of the Arts, and Thora Jacobson, CEO of Philagrafika, who served as moderator of the panel.

Panel speakers, from left, Ben Olshin; Jim Cotter; Thora Jacobson. Not in picture — Douglass Paschall, had to leave early for an opening at the Woodmere

Panelists talked about how to appreciate the Philadelphia art world beyond the realm of economic revenue and tourism, and in a way that makes Philadelphia a model for an artistic community. Ben Olshin talked about how architecture will remain to serve as an example of the greatness of the city (if it’s preserved properly), much like the wonders of ancient Rome remain today despite the everyday struggles of funding, government, and crime. Thora Jacobson’s talk presented examples of the DIY mentality of the current young art scene and noted that despite lack of funding and other support systems, artists are getting the job done themselves – making art communities and exhibition spaces, serving as critics and curators – proving that a DIY spirit can revive a city’s cultural landscape.

A view of the opening reception for When Photography and Print Collide show at the Free Library of Philadelphia

Some questions from the audience challenged the optimistic presentations by saying that these DIY spaces and collectives are in many ways exclusive, while another audience member questioned how we can talk about art when the city’s crime rate is abominable. Panelists offered that perhaps a greater inclusion into the everyday cultural life of the city could in fact bring about a stronger sense of community that could counter negative aspects such as crime, litter, etc. There’s a connection between people being engaged and involved in arts and culture and the safety and beauty of the city.

–Independent art historian Jennifer Zarro, earned her PhD from Rutgers last spring. She has written about Emma Amos and Liz Rywelski here on artblog, and about the Mezuzah show for Art Matters.

Installation shot at Gallery 339 of Donald Camp’s Dust Shaped Hearts. The large-scale photographs of artists, musicians, writers and others confront you with their humanity.

Donald Camp’s photo portraits of contemporary writers, artists, musicians and ordinary people at Gallery 339 are like and unlike other series that document a time and place. Like the 20th-century German photographer August Sander, Camp (a Pew fellow and highly accoladed local artist) is creating a taxonomy of humans who are individuals but also representatives of their groups. And like street photographer Zoe Strauss, he chronicles those not typically captured in official archives. Using a hands-on process that involves dry pigment and a milk-based casein binder and labor-intensive scrubbing, Camp transforms the images into embodiments of the human spirit—created by the hand of the artist who anoints these people with his touch and love.

Left to right, photo-portraits of William Larson, Donald Camp, Jennifer Perry.

The portraits are difficult and yet their beauty is sublime. The larger-than-life images show one unsmiling face after another, cropped to visage and served up like thunderous exclamations. Camp himself appears in one image, surrounded by mentor William Larson and “mentee” Jennifer Perry, who took the artist’s photo. While not a triptych, the three images read as a continuum of energy passed from one individual to another, and their symbolism is like the symbolism of the entire series—one of affirmation.

Donald E. Camp: “Dust Shaped Hearts”
Through Jan. 13. Gallery 339, 339 S. 21st St. 215.731.1530.