ART REVIEW : Photographs by Casebere Display a Lack of Feeling

James Casebere is one of a generation of photographers whose work eschews fact for fiction.

Sculptors and dramatists as much as photo-technicians, these artists apparently have been influenced more by the narratives of film and television than still photography. The larger-than-life glossies of one-shot dramas by Casebere, Cindy Sherman, Nic Nicosia, Laurie Simmons and a slew of other artists in their mid-to-late 30s and early 40s first came to light during the early 1980s. And after their first big splash in museum shows and national magazines, their works have had varying degrees of critical success.

Among these artists, the New York-based Casebere, 37, is one of the least interesting. Virtually a one-note purist, Casebere has created colorless, unpeopled images of dramatic settings that are badly in need of something to say. A selection of Casebere’s photographs made since 1985 opened this week at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, along with a room-sized sculptural installation. The show continues through Dec. 9.

It is not the black-and-white medium that makes these pictures so monochrome. It is the repetitive theme of desolation. Alone, the images seem pristine, simple, perhaps even evocative. Grouped together they are simply empty.

With the massive wood sculpture “Tree Trunk with Broken Bungalow and Shotgun Houses,” 1988, as its centerpiece, this show evidently is an attempt to highlight the artist’s move from behind the camera lens into the realm of three-dimensional staging. All of Casebere’s work involves sculpture; for the photos, he crafted elaborate landscapes with houses, trees, fences and more. He also made still lifes with bowls, boards and artificial plants--all of which show up in the photos in the same shade of gray.

The construction of the objects in the photographs--their smooth surfaces and unadorned shapes--suggest the careful craftsmanship of a potter or toy maker. Often, they are quite beautiful.

What is surprising, then, is the rough-hewn nature of the actual three-dimensional work that so dominates this show. It was designed by Casebere as an extension of his photographic images, but was constructed by carpenters for a show two years ago at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Big, bulky and boring, it lacks even the minimal mystery and controlled drama of the photos.

An image of the calm after a storm, the wreckage after a hurricane, the 13 1/2-foot-high sculpture is a pile of stuff scrunched together, including a house, boat, wagon wheel, surf board, and some surveillance cameras. Its holocaust theme, however, tends to explain the meaning behind some of the other works here. Dark and dramatically lit in the photos and in the gallery, Casebere appears to be suggesting that all of his works represent the aftermath of something utterly horrible.

Just what that event was, however, is never made concrete in any way. Casebere depends far too much upon our imaginations. The work lacks all sense of humanity, so its hard to care what happened. The objects have no character or peculiarities, so they can’t be identified with an individual owner, even an anonymous one.

On every level, these works make it hard to care about them. It is hollow drama, art without heart.