Page 34 - the NOISE APril 2013

Birthday Dogs by ellen Jo roberts Rage by david neely
two viewfinders, two shutters, two apertures
when digital and “old school” converge
by sarah Gianelli
it may seem an odd juxtaposition — a joint photography show between a self-taught retrophile whose baby is a clunky 1950s Po- laroid Pathfinder, and a darkroom-trained former pro gone digital, but for Jerome Co- op artists ellen Jo roberts and david neely that was precisely the point.
“David had seen some of my photographs and liked the idea that he’s this older fellow doing more modern, digital work; prints on metal — newer stuff; and I’m younger than him and into the vintage stuff,” explains Ms. Roberts.
From a purely aesthetic standpoint, the show works because Ms. Roberts and Mr. Neely are attracted to similar subject matter
— Route 66 type kitsch, old gas stations, retro signage, the charm of rusted-over antiques, and the vibrancy of color and natural beauty abundant in the Southwest.
On a deeper level, their work instigates a compelling conversation about a nostalgia for the old ways of doing things mixed with appreciation for the ease and possibilities af- forded by modern technology; and finding a comfortable line — different for every pho- tographer — between the two.
Standing before their intermingled work at the Jerome artist cooperative Gallery, Ms. Roberts clutches a hard, flat, silver case reminiscent of an Airstream trailer. When she pops open the latch, a lens extends like an accordion on worn black bellows patched with automotive sealant.
For this exhibit, Ms. Roberts selected im- ages taken with her favorite workhorse, only one of 40 vintage cameras that comprise her very own Clarkdale Camera Museum.
“I love the results I get with this camera,” she says. “It puts something on the picture
you can recognize.”
What it brings to her compositions is a
washed-out, cinematic quality perfectly suited to her shots of holbrook’s Wigwam Motel, a vintage gas pump, and a Ford Fair- line Futura parked against Jerome’s sublime views. The camera struts its ability — and that of the woman behind it — to capture crisper, brighter colors in pictures of a crate of oranges, fall leaves under a blue sky, and neon lights fluttering like confetti outside clarkdale’s Main street Grill.
Working from a single, peel-apart Polaroid, she scans the image (so some digital does come into play) and prints it onto heavy gauge paper or canvas. Besides removing the occasional dust spot, she doesn’t change a thing.
“There’s something more substantial, tac- tile, and real about the way we used to do things,” says Ms. Roberts. “When everything wasn’t just pixels. Modern technology makes our lives easier and we’re learning new tech- niques and skills all the time, but technology also causes us to lose touch with beautiful skills we once had. My vintage cameras, be- ing all manual with no automatic settings, keep parts of my brain in good shape. I don’t want us, as a civilization, to become too reli- ant on computers to do everything for us.”
Mr. Neely would agree. Although he has moved into the digital realm, shooting with a Nikon D7000, his background as a com- mercial advertising photographer is deeply entrenched in the old school ways of long, tedious hours in the darkroom.
“Back then, everything was film,” he says. “You learned exposures and depth of field so that it was second nature. i don’t think a lot of people who have started out with
a digital camera have an appreciation for what it can do and are really drawing out all the best aspects of it. It was so much harder and required so much more techni- cal skill when you were shooting film. You weren’t able to look at the image, and some- one’s paying you, and you have to send it to a lab, and you’re praying that your exposures are right, that the lab doesn’t screw it up somehow.”
Later, teaching photography at the high school and college level, he was forced to educate himself in digital photography and found that he could do digitally what used to take him days or weeks in the darkroom.
Although Mr. Neely might go into an im- age to intensify the colors of, say, a Bisbee building facade, or bring out a small detail like a heart-shaped wreath in the window of antique store, and is now experimenting with digital painting to add texture, he too, has a line not to cross.
“I don’t want to have women growing out of tree trunks; I don’t want to put things in there that weren’t there. I might move some- thing,” he says, “but I don’t want it to become completely digitized. I don’t want to alter it to the point of not recognizing it.”
The luminosity and eye-popping colors of Mr. Neely’s aluminum prints hang in vivid contrast to Ms. Roberts’ more muted imag- ery, but they dovetail in subject matter and a mutual photographic intent to help people see the beauty in the easy-to-miss details of Southwest life.
“there are a lot of people who are so focused on what’s going on in their mind they’re not seeing what’s going on around them,” says Ms. Roberts. “I want people to feel like this is a beautiful world we live in.”
Both artists have a few anomalies in the show — Mr. Neely, a series of tasteful, artistic nudes (a throwback to his days working as a Playboy photographer) —and Ms. Roberts, a few staged shots of her three small dogs in party hats, displaying her inveterate silly side.
In a surprising last moment of wistfulness, Mr. Neely confesses that he invited Ms. Rob- erts to be in the show with him because, re- ally, she’s doing the kind of photography he used to do and wishes he still was. He shows me a small, subdued photograph of four pot- ted plants that has been hanging, largely un- noticed and unsold, for six months.
“If I had my druthers, this is what I’d do,” he says. “This is what I would show because this is what I like in photography — the way it’s framed, the way it’s matted, the simplicity of the subject matter, and it’s black and white. That’s where I came from. But it doesn’t sell like the aluminum prints do. As I get older and more cantankerous I’ll probably say, ‘you want that?’” He gestures to his more popu- lar work. “’Well, I’m not doing it.’ But for right now, it’s sell that metal.”
Ms. Roberts and Mr. Neely celebrate a sec- ond opening of their show, “Capturing the Light: Yesterday and Today in Fine Art Pho- tography,” at the Jerome Artist Cooperative during First Saturday ArtWalk on April 6. The show runs through May 3. Mr. Neely’s work can also be found at the ian russell Gallery in Prescott and online at davidneelyphotog- raphy.ifp3.com. Ms. Roberts’ photographs can be found on flickr.com/photos/ellenjo.
| Sarah gianelli is a Jeroman who never ceases to be amazed by the latitudes of this old mining town. sarahgianelli@hotmail.com
34 • APRIL 2013 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us