Photographer Lockhart Puts Her Still-Lifes Into Motion

Time moves slowly in Sharon Lockhart’s exquisite pictures of in-between moments, in which nothing much happens yet everything matters.

Take, for example, “Untitled” (1998), a color photograph that presents two views of a freestyle ikebana arrangement of kumquats, green berries and a single palm frond in a white vase on a polished wood table. Running down the center of the midsize print is a blurry line that divides the image into what appears to be two frames of film.

On the left, the entire arrangement is visible, its bright orange fruits balanced against its lime green berries by the palm frond that gracefully circles around both. On the right, the camera appears to have swooped in for a close-up of the kumquats; part of the double-necked vase and about half of the berries have been cropped from the picture. The impression of motion is intensified by the blurriness of the flora, vase and table, all of which are surrounded by halo-like outlines that keep them from snapping into focus.

But the background of Lockhart’s meticulously composed work makes it clear this is not a diptych created by the juxtaposition of a pair of stills. Shrouded in deep, nearly black shadows, the slender limbs of a thick leafy hedge continue, without interruption, from one side of the image to the other, which means that the vertical line in the middle of the photograph was not formed in the darkroom, when two negatives were printed side by side, but in front of the actual objects depicted, when Lockhart snapped the picture.

Almost. To look closely (and to spend a fair amount of time engaged by the print’s perplexing details) is to see that Lockhart didn’t photograph the ikebana arrangement directly, but captured its double reflection in a window that forms a corner of one of the rooms in her house. The vertical line running down the middle of the picture is actually a seam of epoxy that joins two panes of glass at a 90-degree angle. To make this uncanny photograph, she placed the camera next to the actual ikebana arrangement, aiming it at the window.

Although the resulting image seems to embody both physical movement and the passing of time, it actually accounts for a mere instant of utter stillness, the split-second it took for the shutter to open and close.

The time you spend in front of Lockhart’s still life--moving up close, stepping back, gazing intently and glancing out of the corner of your eye--is its real subject. Subtly compelling you to pay attention to the way you pay attention to the world around you, this mesmerizing work takes you inside your own head at the same time that it heightens your perceptions of the external world.

With impressive regularity, similar experiences unfold throughout the five galleries and one hallway at San Diego’s Museum of Contemporary Art, where 17 single-frame and multipart works by Lockhart have been beautifully installed. Organized by curator Dominic Molon for Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the quietly satisfying survey of photographs from 1994 to the present includes about a third fewer than it did in Chicago.

The decision not to crowd the limited space was a good one. Lockhart’s photographs do not open, like windows, onto an illusory world beyond the picture plane as much as they function like contemporary works of installation art, spilling into the space occupied by visitors. Her pictures require such a high level of concentration that the extra breathing room is both necessary and enjoyable.

Many of Lockhart’s fastidiously printed images include depictions of large expanses of glass, including tables, sliding doors, store windows, museum display cases and protective barricades. The ghostly reflections seen in and through these transparent yet reflective surfaces simultaneously draw you into the pictures and distance you from the people represented in them.

Although most of Lockhart’s photographs focus on individuals, they are not portraits. For example, a nearly life-size image of a young man standing on the balcony of his fashionably generic hotel room at twilight tells us less about him as a person than it does about a psychological state of grounded detachment, of being in but not of the world. Though most people feel that this peculiarly modern experience is alienating and thus unpleasant, some are drawn to it. Count Lockhart among the latter, who finds this cast of mind to be remarkably conducive to thinking.

Another dark and lovely photograph depicts a woman standing in the woods behind someone whose body is bisected by the picture’s left edge. With eyes either downcast or closed, the middle-aged woman appears to be looking inward. The focal point of the 6-by-7-foot print is her right hand, which is firmly pressed against a tree trunk.

Rather than suggesting that she is dizzy and has reached out to maintain her balance, her gesture seems to be animated by the desire to confirm that the world doesn’t disappear when one stops looking at it. In other works, Lockhart indicates similarly distracted states of consciousness by showing people napping, glancing downward and staring off into space, as if lost in daydreams.

The only individuals who look directly into the camera are from other cultures, including a British boy who stands at the shore of the North Sea (in a diptych from 1994), a laborer who repairs the marble floor of the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City (in a gigantic triptych from 1999) and one of the girls on a high school basketball team in Japan (in a 12-part series from 1997). It is as if Lockhart does not need to emphasize the private, interior lives of these people because their cultural differences ensure that they occupy a world apart from hers, and that of most American viewers.

Two films by Lockhart, which are scheduled to be shown in the museum’s theater, explore similar issues somewhat less successfully. “Goshogaoka” (made in Japan in 1997) and “Teatro Amazonas” (made in Brazil in 1999) are less engaging not because they take more time to see than the photographs, but because they are noisy and experienced en masse. Being part of a crowd shatters the spell that is so delicately woven by Lockhart’s felicitous photographs.

Lockhart, who lives in Los Angeles, belongs to a generation of artists who don’t care whether or not a scene is staged. What counts is its impact and whether or not it continues to resonate in your mind’s-eye long after you’ve stopped looking. In the right mood, this is just how her finely tuned, formally rigorous photographs work.

* “Sharon Lockhart,” Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, 700 Prospect St., La Jolla, (858) 454-3541, through Sept. 3. Closed Wednesdays. Adults $4; students, seniors, military, $2; children younger than 12 free.