Photography That Tells It Like It Is

If truth is stranger than fiction, why is reality-based television so boring?

Strange as it may seem, an answer to this question emerges from “Beyond Boundaries: Contemporary Photography in California,” a 64-artist, 100-work survey on view at the University Art Museum at Cal State Long Beach. Organized by the San Francisco-based Friends of Photography, this hit-and-miss exhibition makes a surprising point: The most potent photographs being made today--like the most popular television programs--are reality-based.

In a sense, all photographs are reality-based. Printed from light-sensitive film that is momentarily exposed, each is a physical record of the visible world or an event that took place in it.

But the best images in “Beyond Boundaries” stand out from the less compelling ones because they do not dress up their subjects with an aura of artsiness. Stripping darkroom manipulation to a minimum, and leaving the special effects of studio setups behind, the photographers who make reality-based works take their chances with the ongoing drama of everyday life, whether it unfolds in city streets, a Louisiana swamp, an amusement park in Torrance or on the set of a low-budget porno film.

They form the largest group in the exhibition, accounting for a full quarter of its participants. More important, they are responsible for the vast majority of its most riveting images, which initially appear to be too weird to be true.

Bathed in crisp, seemingly artificial light, John Humble’s “Monsoon Lagoon, Torrance” transforms a forest of electrical towers and a pair of play-land swimming pools into a gloriously compromised paradise that is a perfect metaphor for Southern California. Queasy beauty also takes stunning shape in Richard Misrach’s picture of an algae-choked swamp, which resembles a finely manicured golf course or a natural history museum diorama from which the taxidermied animals have vanished. A rusty pipeline divides foreground from background, creating an exquisite stillness that sends a chill down your spine.

John Divola’s “2800 Block, Western Avenue, Los Angeles” delivers a similar jolt. No people or cars break the charged stasis established by its row of small businesses, unmarked buildings and motorcycle club, whose rank-and-file alignment recalls the haphazard unity of hastily formed militias in cites under siege.

To make his cheerfully ominous photograph, Miles Coolidge traveled to Safetyville, a one-third-size stage-prop of a town where schoolchildren go on field trips to learn how to cross the street safely.

Other works that give vivid form to the weird vibe percolating beneath the surface of modern life are Sharon Lockhart’s starkly formalized interior, Henry Wessel’s noir-inspired portrait of an ordinary apartment building and Todd Hido’s snow-covered tract homes awash in a nuclear glow. Also notable are Louis Baltz’s lush, security camera views of corporate buildings in Germany, Robbert Flick’s jittery, multi-frame picture of Long Beach Harbor and Uta Barth’s blurry diptych, which has the presence of a slow-motion film.

Roger Minick’s little picture of a palm tree and its upside-down doppelganger suggests that the world is a topsy-turvy place, depending upon your point of view. Likewise, Larry Sultan’s large color print gives playful form to the idea of infinite regress. His portrait of an off-camera porn star takes viewers behind the scenes only to reveal yet another eagerly struck pose.

All of these works are animated by the same don’t-blink-you’ll-miss-it immediacy that gives live events their edgy vitality. In the past, such hard-boiled, sharply focused urgency was associated with so-called straight photography. Today, the twists and turns of urban life are too slippery to be captured by such earnest realism. No stranger to trashy subject matter, reality-based photography, like reality-based TV, goes where the action is.

The rest of the photographers fall into smaller groups that include followers of Romanticism (who make blurry black-and-white prints); followers of Richard Avedon (who isolate brightly lit objects against blank backgrounds); and followers of two strands of Postmodernism (one that emphasizes theatrical artifice and the other that puts a priority on message-oriented, text-enhanced images).

Another group consists of photographers whose works are inspired by abstract painting (the standouts here are the very different works of Susan Silton and Anthony Hernandez--hers are super-blurry and his are super-crisp close-ups). Rounding out the show are a handful of uncategorizable misfits, including John Baldessari, represented by an inkjet print, and Dinh Q. Le, with a triptych woven from cut-up photos, neither of whose part-by-part pieces add up to tidily resolved wholes.

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction, but it’s also more elusive. And this is where reality-based photography distinguishes itself from reality-based TV. The best artists bring a light touch to their handling of reality. Rather than embellishing it with special effects or serving it up howsoever it happens to present itself, they edit, clarify and condense, intensifying its impact so that every detail makes sense and viewers don’t miss anything.

* “Beyond Boundaries: Contemporary Photography in California,” University Art Museum, Cal State Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., (562) 985-5761, through Aug 6. Closed Mondays.