Evolving Stillness: Current Takes on Historical Photographic Processes at the Doughtery Arts Center
until Friday, October 30
Dougherty Arts Center (1110 Barton Springs Road)
Monday - Thursday 9 AM - 9:30 PM Friday 9 AM - 5:30 PM Saturday 10 AM - 2 PM, free
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Photographer Ann Texter brings the irresistible combination of death and comedy to her Polaroid image transfer, “Real Cowgirls Die with Their Boots On.” Both haunting and humorous, she combines a timeless aesthetic with genuine macabre, and an iconographic nod to the ill-fated Wicked Witch of the East. This truly Texan sentiment requires a Polaroid image to be pulled apart before it developed fully. Once it’s placed on a dampened surface, pressed with a roller to transfer the image in reverse, and stripped of the Polaroid backing, the cowgirl’s death comes to life. Texter's dry plate tin type, “Flapper” mingles a surreal masquerade image with 1920’s eroticism. She achieves this affect by coating a dark metal plate with Liquid Light, the same emulsion found on photographic paper. Following exposure under an enlarger, the plate is processed as a normal gelatin print.
Terry St. Arnauld’s “Equus,” a dazzling display of the luminosity in dark eyes and blond mane, showcases the platinotype, a technique first developed in 1873. Once a sheet of paper is coated with platinum salts and ferric oxalate, the sheet of paper is pressed against a negative and exposed to UV light. The image is developed in potassium oxalate, before it’s cleared in several baths. The tonal rage this precious metal allows shines beautifully in Arnauld’s resulting photograph.
Mathew Magruder’s “Cemetery in Snow,” with its palpable calm, reminds viewers how inviting the reflective season of Autumn can be. This meditative winter graveyard is created as a cyanotype, an iron salt process involving two chemicals brushed on a sheet of paper, which is then dried in the dark, printed on contact paper under UV light, and water washed. Magruder then applies palladium, the same process as platinotype with palladium, silvery metallic element, in place of platinum.
This sepulchral season reigns on with Spiffy Tumbleweed, who offers a ghostly look at a familiar place in “City Hall Revisited.” The contrasts in this photograph create a chilling silence. A negative, created with silver salt and gelatin coated paper, produces this effect. On the other side of the hopefulness spectrum, Gary Nored’s “Doorway” radiates a sense of possibility. VanDyke is a process that adds mystery to his glimpse out the doorway, this time undergoing the platinum process with silver nitrate instead of platinum. The reddish-brown tones that don’t always make themselves known in Austin leaves are in keeping with the changes this time of year. Together, these talented creators, along with many others whose work illuminates this exhibit, succeed in bringing far away times closer, and expanding the boundaries of reality with every image.
Drawing with Light is on display at the Dougherty Arts Center through October 30th.
