My family are all from small-town rural areas, sometime in the next few years I'll be retiring and moving to a small town, but during my adult life I have always lived in cities. And one thing I have always appreciated about cities are the museums and galleries. Here in Kansas City the Nelson-Atkins is a mid-range (not great) museum, but last year finished a major expansion with the construction of a highly acclaimed (by architects nationally) and frequently ridiculed (by local rubes) new modern space adjoining the original 1930's typical neo-gothic pile of stone. Coincident with, or maybe because of, the expansion, Hallmark Cards (headquartered here in town) gave the museum their entire collection of hundreds of thousands photographic images. And so the new space has large spaces devoted to photography. One relatively permanent section with images of the Masters, a second section with rotating collections of lesser-know artists, and sometimes a photography exhibit in one of the two Special Exhibits sections.
Yesterday through early April one of the Special Exhibits is on the work of Art Sinsabaugh. Some of his early work while a student in Chicago in the early 1950's, and then images from his midwest landscape series and his Chicago series, both done in the early-mid 60's. Sinsabaugh used a large format camera. I mean, really large! 12'' x 20" large! His camera (and the very sturdy wooden tripod) were there as part of the exhibit. One of the fascinating aspects of his work is that they were all printed 20' wide (presumably contact printed from the negative.) However, for many of the midwest landscape shorts, the print was only 1-2" tall, and none were over 5 inches tall. So you have a panorama effect achieved through selective cropping from the top, with a very successful result. Though there were a couple I would have liked to have seen full-frame; I think the huge empty sky that he cropped out could have been at least as effective as the very short very wide panoramas. (His Chicago prints tended to be taller because of the greater vertical content he was dealing with in the city.) A smaller exhibit had photos by contemporary photographers Mark Klett and Bryon Wolfe and by Mark Ruwedel. Klett&Wolfe have done many recreations of the masters' work, locating the exact spot, angle, time of day etc. where Muybridge or Adams must have stood to take some of their iconic images. Their prints are mostly stitched- together panoramas overlaid with reproductions of prints from the original artist. So you can see the broad view, and see what elements of the scene Ansel or whoever chose to focus on. In one particular image, they found a spot on the shore of Lake Tenaya (Yosemite) where at various times Muybridge (1872), Weston (1937) and Adams (1942) all stood and took three very different pictures. A fascinating demonstration of the art of composition. I am not sure about the Sinsabaugh exhibit, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Klett&Wolfe work showed up at a gallery or museum near you one of these days - worth an afternoon. stan -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
