Turning One’s Back on Art

On paper, an exhibition called “Rear View,” consisting entirely of photographs taken of human behinds, or from behind, could smack of novelty. And, to some extent, there is a clever, nudge-nudge factor in this show, assembled by curator Nancy Kapitanoff at the CSUN Art Gallery, which is full of rumps and subjects caught unawares. But it’s hardly a frivolous romp.

For one thing, we can chalk one up for the oft-forsaken medium of fine art photography. This is the most substantial showing of photographs, and legendary photographers, seen in these parts for a long while. Thematically, too, the show explores deeper ideas, about figurative art and perception among other things, than are apparent at face value (or about-face value, as the case may be).

At the core of many of these photographs is the notion of subversive perspective. In art, and in most media, the figure is generally viewed from a frontal, consensual position. Rear-view images imply something else, a kind of secretive activity of the beholder, a sneak attack rather than an active encounter. Eye contact is avoided and collaboration sidestepped.

But there are other phenomena that occur. If a frontal portrait is usually a closed loop in which our attention is seized by the subject’s appearance or comportment, the rear view can be like peering over someone’s shoulder, in which case we enjoy a shared view.

Such is the case in photographs by Tseng Kwong Chi, looking at men who look at dramatic sights, whether the Grand Canyon or an imposing Buddha sculpture in Japan. In Henri Cartier-Bresson’s 1961 image, “The Berlin Wall,” three men in suits stand on a pedestal on the sidewalk, watching the wall go up--as do we, by proxy.

(An important footnote in the show is a letter written by Cartier-Bresson to Joan Munkacsi, daughter of photographer Martin Munkacsi, whose 1930 image of black youths running jubilantly into the ocean in Liberia--seen from behind, of course--greatly influenced the famous French photographer.)

Rear views can also pique a special kind of curiosity, as with Steven Bramson’s 1946 image, “Models and Blank Screen.” Why are these post-war women gazing at a blank screen? The ambiguity becomes the picture’s charm.

Mirror play is behind Cary Beth Cryor’s “Rite of Passage,” in which the photographer snaps a picture during childbirth, aiming at the convex mirror above her hospital bed just as her child is coming into the world.

To indulge another appropriate pun, some of this work offers an enlightening historical rear view. There are images that provide a vivid, you-are-there vision of notable places and figures in history, viewed through the lucid, and sometimes revisionist, lens of hindsight.

Garry Winogrand’s complex shot of JFK shows the president from behind the podium but with a shot of his face on a TV monitor backstage.

Babe Ruth, in a 1948 shot by Nat Fein, looks out at an adoring throng in the twilight of his career. More chillingly, a shot in swastika-dominated Nuremberg, circa 1937, eyes the coming Nazi tide of terror, as telescoped in a shot from behind the healthy young backs of future soldiers.

The show, focusing on diversity rather than homogeneity, veers from the sublime--writer Eudora Welty’s shot of a statue standing vigil in a Mississippi cemetery, or Hiroshi Watanabe’s shot of a bulbous Botero sculpture in Central Park looking out over the Manhattan skyline--to the grotesque. The last, seen in “Woman Once Bird,” is by the deviously imaginative Joel Peter Witkin.

The photograph depicts the manipulated back of a woman, with huge gashes like F-holes in a cello, scattered feathers and a scary metal belt contraption that alludes to sadomasochism. What would a wide-ranging photography exhibit be without a Witkin?

Another memorable image is Horace Bristol’s romantic 1933 shot of two pilots ambling onto a rain-slicked runway at Santa Monica Airport. One of our finest public voyeurs, Lee Friedlander, works in that generous gray zone between photojournalism and fine-art photography, and here he shows an image from the ‘60s, obviously snapped on the fly. The shadow of a man’s head settles on the hairy surface of a woman’s fur coat, blending almost seamlessly into her own primly designed coif.

Last but not least, we find a collection of ample derrieres seated in a row at a picnic table in Amy Arbus’ “Mingles Picnic.” Like her late mother, Diane Arbus, Amy shows an appreciation for nudist camps and other fringes of society. And, in this case, a statement of liberation from social norms is also inherently funny: a group portrait with a rear view.

BE THERE

“Rear View,” through April 18 at CSUN Art Gallery, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge. Gallery hours: Mon. and Sat., noon-4 p.m.; Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. (818) 677-2156.