Alter Images Form Heart of His Work : Photography: Exhibit at Cypress College shows how Jack Butler mixes the real with what he calls the ‘non-real.’

Photographer Jack Butler deals with societal problems and family issues through his photographic sculptures and various wall pieces.

But with Butler there is a contradiction. Photographs intrigue him, yet he rarely shoots photographs. His images largely are collected: from books, calendars, throw-away flyers, photographs, newspapers or any mass-produced image. If he sees something intriguing or that is potentially intriguing, he saves it.

Seven images from Butler’s current series, “The Trial,” are on display at the Cypress College Photography Gallery until Dec. 1.

The large 38-by 49-inch photographs feature work from a 1960s murder trial in which Butler has masked the characters’ faces and hands so they become ambiguous and strange.

“I like the play between the two-dimensionality of the figures and the photographic reality of the clothing and the stuff around them,” Butler said. “I like the jarring conflict between the real and the non-real in the photograph.” The “Trial” started out in a small secondhand store where Butler found a box with hundreds of old photographs. He spent an afternoon looking them over to cull out 18 photos for his project.

He thought the photographs didn’t look real, but staged, like something you might see on television.

He rephotographed the original press photos and isolated the primary characters of the courtroom setting. “Basically the treatment of the characters is essentially to neutralize them so they aren’t individuals,” Butler said.

Then he cut out the figures from the rephotographed work and obliterated the faces and hands with white paper. Next he raised the cut-out figures and the titles off a dark background, lighting them so they cast a shadow for a three-dimensional look. Then he rephotographed and enlarged them.

Butler first got interested in photography while studying art for advertising. He was more intrigued in what the images meant rather than using them in an advertising sense.

Butler, 43, was born in Oswego, N.Y., and reared in Arizona. In 1960, he moved to Pasadena and later earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art at Cal State Los Angeles. He also received an master of fine arts from UCLA. Currently, he teaches photography at Cal State Los Angeles.

“I just teach photography as a medium,” Butler said. “It’s like a language, you teach someone a language and they can do a grocery list or poetry or scientific studies.”

It is the context into which photographed images are placed that has come to fascinate Butler most.

“I became interested in (photographs’) societal context,” Butler said. “Each time it’s placed in another context its meaning changes. Let’s say you pick a snapshot image. If you see it in someone’s photo album in their house it has a certain connotation about it.

“If you took that same image and put it on the wall in the Museum of Modern Art it would have a different connotation. If you take the same photograph and use it on an editorial page of a newspaper it has a different connotation.

“The meaning of a photograph is so dependent on its context. Its meaning changes as its audience or viewer sees it based on their own experiences.”

“Trial,” a series of black-and-white images by photographer Jack Butler, will be on display until Dec. 1 at the Cypress College Photo Gallery, in Technical Education Building 1, 9200 Valley View, Cypress. Hours: Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday, 8 a.m. to noon. Admission is free. For more information call: (714) 826-4511.