Where the camera is king: three photography exhibits

Fine art photography, three exhibitions

“Arthur Tress: Rambles, Dreams, and Shadows,” plus “Sheila Metzner: From Life,” and Peter Fetterman’s “The Power of Photography”

by Bondo Wyszpolski

In the earlier part of his career, New York-based Arthur Tress felt that the reason contemporary photography often failed to move us personally was because it didn’t “touch upon the hidden life of the imagination and fantasy, which is hungry for stimulation.” Photography that “drowns in humanity” or simply “pleases us with mere aesthetically correct compositions” weren’t what he had in mind. What he hoped for were images that we could pray to, or that would scare us, or that would make us well. “Most of mankind’s art for the past 5,000 years was created for just those purposes. It seems absurd to stop now.”

Those words were written in 1970, and it’s not clear if Tress would stand by them today, almost 54 years later, because his current exhibition at the Getty Museum only covers the first decade of his professional work, that is, from 1968 to 1978. I have a little book of his from 1988, “The Teapot Opera,” which isn’t even mentioned in the catalog that accompanies “Arthur Tress: Rambles, Dreams, and Shadows,” which by the way is on view, along with “Sheila Metzner: From Life,” through Feb. 18.

Well, it was a productive, enthusiastic, and perhaps even idealistic 10 years. Tress covered a lot of ground, literally and figuratively. Possibly his childhood didn’t point in that direction. However, as James A. Ganz points out, “For Tress, the camera became more than a mechanical tool; it was an object of enchantment that transformed the mild-mannered and shy young man into a confident stage director taking complete control of his craft and his vision.”

Tress traveled quite a bit during the late 1960s, with time spent in Paris, in Stockholm, and other European cities. After returning to New York (and it seems that Robert Mapplethorpe thought of him as a competitor), Tress was hired in 1968 to travel to North Carolina and to document Appalachian folk crafts. As Mazie M. Harris describes it, “While the artist’s initial visit to Appalachia had been focused on the endurance of nativist American traditions, in subsequent trips he began more and more to foreground threats to the fragile human and environmental ecosystems of local communities.”

Some of the resulting images are reminiscent of those by Sally Mann and Doris Ullmann. Harris goes on to sum up the experience for the young photographer: “Tress’s Appalachia pictures capture changes to the people and places of the region but also register the transformation of the artist himself as he forged a career path.”

Among his other early projects, in 1969 Tress created “The Ramble,” a series of images of young gay men lounging about in Central Park and hoping to hook up with more of the same. “Open Space in the Inner City” occupied him from 1969 to 1971, and Tress took thousands of photographs. “Set primarily in New York City and its environs,” as Ganz writes, “the ‘Open Space’ series emphasized urban blight and crowding — focusing on polluted streetscapes and waterways, housing projects, urban parks, junkyards, factories, and parking lots — and included candid and posed images of children, teenagers, families, and commuters.”

It was a sociological, environmental project that visually documented the area as it was over 50 years ago. But Tress didn’t just want to document blighted urban landscapes, he wanted to suggest solutions, at least through his photographs. It was an ambitious and commendable endeavor. In the catalog, this section of plates opens with a shot of a vast cemetery (in Queens, with the Manhattan skyline spanning the background), followed by images of people young and old, individual or in groups. This is the common herd, so to speak, and many of those portrayed do not look especially happy or hopeful. Some of these pictures of children or young adults make us realize how difficult it really is to get through life, especially during one’s impressionable and vulnerable years. I’m thinking, specifically, of a few images (unfortunately not available to the press) such as “Girl in Front of Parochial School, Monticello, New York,” “Father and Son at Rally for Mayor, New York, New York,” and “Father and Daughter, Brighton Beach, New York.” The one child I wonder what happened to is an earlier image, “Appalachian Girl Who is Sick with Anemia, Lookout, Kentucky.” It brings to mind those old sepias of Victorian children in bed, dying of tuberculosis.

Somewhat related to the “Open Space” series is “The Dream Collector,” which contains images of children in their “daymare” scenarios, with Tress drawing inspiration from Freud, Jung, Buñuel, Cocteau, and other writers and filmmakers who were prominent at the time. These are creative, imaginative images, but the effect is of a shadowy, twilit surrealism. “The Dream Collector” also echoes another series, “Theater of the Mind,” again one may think of Surrealist artists, and we can add Dalí and Magritte to the mix.

I should remind the reader that all of the images in the catalog and in the exhibition are in black and white, and that Tress is a master of light and dark. So perhaps it’s not surprising that we have a series and a book called “Shadow” (1975), which is essentially a graphic novel comprised of shadows and silhouettes that may recall German silent films of the 1920s such as “Nosferatu,” “Metropolis,” and “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” They may also remind us of Javanese shadow puppets.

One of the things that I found more interesting than the show itself (impressive though it be) is the inclusion, in the catalog, of several contact sheets (yes, this was before digital) in which we can look at the strips of images Tress took of a certain subject before deciding on the one he wanted to print. Furthermore, that selected image was sometimes cropped, dodged or burned to achieve the desired effect.

Finally, it should be emphasized that “Arthur Tress: Rambles, Dreams, and Shadows” highlights only the early career of this photographer. There was to be a lot more in the decades that followed.

The show is on view through Feb. 18 at the Getty Center.

Bonus tracks

Paired with Arthur Tress in the same gallery is “From Life,” a survey of images taken by Sheila Metzner (born in 1939), who made quite a name for herself in the 1980s with her fashion photography. Many of her works (a blend of Pictorialism and Modernism) almost seem like pastels. They tend to be in color, and their soft-focus is in contrast to the black-and-white and sharp focus that Tress prefers. Metzner, of course, deserves a full review as well, but we’ll save that for another time.

Furthermore, there’s a not-to-be-missed exhibition at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. “The Power of Photography” was curated by Peter Fetterman, who owns the eponymous gallery in Santa Monica. He selected 70 prints from his collection, from the famous (Steve McCurry’s “Afghan Girl”) to the little-seen and anonymous. He also made it a point to select only one image from each photographer, a choice, he said, that wasn’t always so easy. The majority of the photographs are in black-and-white. One of them that caught my eye was of a koala bear, printed in blue. The Bowers folks were reluctant to part with their catalogs (there was also one to accompany “Beyond the Great Wave: Works by Hokusai from the British Museum”), so I’m ignorant of who deserves the credit. At any rate, “The Power of Photography” was made possible by the Ronald C. and Kristine Pietersma Family Trust. It’s on view through Jan. 14.

The Bowers Museum is located at 2002 N. Main St, Santa Ana. (714) 567-3600 or visit bowers.org. ER