In the Untamed Wilds of Civilization

Initially, Toshio Shibata’s tightly cropped photographs of concrete dams, steel fences, graded mountainsides and reinforced embankments seem to be elegant studies of the various ways light and shadow play off of one another to form the illusion of solid objects. But the Japan-based photographer’s black-and-white images are more than mere formal exercises.

At Gallery Luisotti, an undercurrent of desperation pulls viewers into a world where man-made edifices provide emotional uncertainty as much as physical stability. Rather than assuring visitors that we stand on terra firma, Shibata’s powerful pictures of structures engineered to control erosion emphasize the tenuousness of human life.

The largest photograph, “Iwakuni City, Yamaguchi Prefecture,” delivers a dizzying experience of vertigo. Depicting the intersection between a sheer rock face and a massive dam, the vertical image is divided diagonally by a series of steep stairs. The scale of the seemingly endless steps intensifies the composition’s instability, cluing viewers into the immensity of the dam and the cliff, both of which dwarf us.

Likewise, “Narakawa Village, Nagano Prefecture” poignantly illustrates civilization’s precarious position in the world. Surrounded by bunker-like barricades, angled ramparts and steel pipelines, a small building sits forlornly in the center of the print.

In other pictures, culverts, dikes, sandbags and systematically arranged rocks march across the landscape like invading armies. As if deployed to reinforce a battered planet, these artificial structures embody the desire to keep a toehold on life as we know it.

In the 19th century, similarly composed images often depicted outposts of civilization, set in the midst of nature’s untamed vastness. The picture Shibata paints is more complicated.

Based in the conviction that civilization has replaced nature as the territory in which meaningful dramas are played out, his art demonstrates that people do not have to leave cities to find inhospitable surroundings. Today, outposts of civilization are regularly built in the middle of supposedly civilized societies, raising troubling questions about the goals of both.

* Gallery Luisotti, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 453-0043, through Sept. 11. Closed Sundays and Mondays.