PHOTOGRAPHY REVIEW : Park Exhibit a Portrait of an Art Form

When Louis J. M. Daguerre invented photography in his Paris studio in 1839, he was trying to create a tool that would make his work as a scene painter easier. Thus, the first photographs--later called daguerreotypes--were literally works of art.

Ironically, it would take more than a century for photography itself to be considered art, and there are museum directors around right now who will dispute it. All but the most stubborn visitors of the “That Was Then . . . This Is Now” exhibit at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park will agree that photography can be as exciting and innovative as any art form.

By juxtaposing daguerreotypes with work by four contemporary artists, exhibit organizer Arthur Ollman reveals that photography today covers a lively range, from highly emotional, posed images and “photo-sculptures,” to the coupling of written texts with the photographs and art made from magazine advertisements.

For this exhibit, Ollman chose not to emphasize the history of photography, but to demonstrate the range of possibilities that photography now offers.

The stark human head portraits of Misha Gordin’s “Shout” series are most like the early daguerreotypes. Using a photographic backdrop--mainly a nighttime ocean scene--Gordin presents his models as though they were buried to their necks in the sand, or perhaps they have torn through the earth in anguish at their oppression.

The subject matter is government repression. Many of the models are shaved bald and have numbers printed on their faces. Tight wrappings of thread bite into one man’s face.

Gordin, a Russian immigrant now living in Michigan, refers to the repression of the Soviet Gulag. But the heads, coated with mud that is dried and flaking or plastered with candle wax, or eyes ablaze in a horrific scream, could as easily refer to government repression anywhere, whether in Afghanistan or Central or South America.

And yet there is an element of human strength in Gordin’s work reminiscent of the tightly reined spirits of the Victorian-age families pictured in the daguerreotypes.

In marked contrast, Klaus Kammerichs’ photo-sculptures are a fascinating diversion. Viewers will find themselves stooping and moving around the gallery to get the right angle on his bronze, cast aluminum and wood/polystryol sculptures.

A German artist, Kammerichs has “regressed” his photographs back into a three-dimensional state--not the original object. Seen from many angles, they are abstract forms. Only when viewed from the exact point that the photograph was made do the sculptures leap into focus.

Using a scientific approach, Kammerichs has contrived to code his sculptures of common objects to reflect the many shades of gray in the original picture.

His blowup sculpture of a thimble is made of a number of carved dowels recessed at varying lengths into a box. When viewed at a distance the overall effect is of a glittering thimble.

Kammerichs also has a series of small-scale bronze figures in homage to the early moving pictures of Eadweard Muybridge. The sculptures of javelin throwers, runners or high jumpers reveal four different moments of jumping or running when viewed from each side.

Like any museum exhibit of serious artworks, this show demands time to take it all in. In the case of “That Was Then . . . This Is Now,” plan a minimum of two hours. Better yet, make several visits.

It takes at least an hour to work through all 36 of Jack Fulton’s color and black and white images. Titled “2 Saunters: Summer and Winter,” the series is a written and photographic record of two extended treks Fulton made through the Sierra Nevada mountains.

It’s easy to imagine him caroling along through tall stands of fir trees and across rocky outcroppings as some punning, pseudo-folksy, Henry Thoreau character. It’s best to think of Fulton’s literary photographs as chapters in a book.

In the margins of his scenic images of Lake Tahoe, snowy mountains and even lichens, Fulton has scrawled a diary of comments, including personal thoughts, quotes from sources as diverse as Shakespeare, Clemens and Eliot, and even diagrams of flowers.

Robert Heinecken’s casual concoctions, on the other hand, are sensual magazine advertisement photographs. His satires of a material-oriented society seem like a slap in the face of the stern-faced family poses seen in the exhibit’s daguerreotypes.

A Los Angeles artist who teaches at UCLA, Heinecken doesn’t actually make photographs, but rips them out of slick magazines, forms them with lacquer into three-dimensional shapes and mounts them on boards to create large, collages.

His works, with titles like “Upper Middle Class Nuclear Family,” feature people in expensive clothes, carefully coifed heads and emphasize brand names like a chain of hood ornaments from expensive automobiles.

Heinecken’s art drips with cynicism for portrayal of glamorous living by our culture as the ideal life style. “Health Conscious Young Woman” shows a stressed face--maybe during a workout--in which the tip of the nose is missing and a disembodied, delicate hand lifting a gleaming stainless steel dumb bell.

On first glimpse, it’s hard to take Heinecken’s slight art as serious work, even while agreeing with its message.

“That Was Then . . . This Is Now” makes a thoughtful display of still photography’s evolution without going into a detailed chronology of the art form.

Almost from photography’s beginning, artists latched onto Daguerre’s invention, as the exhibit’s subtle daguerreotypes and ambrotypes from 1840-50 illustrate. Today the camera remains a tool for portraying and triggering feelings and thoughts about people and the universe we live in.

“That Was Then . . . This Is Now” continues through March 5.