UC Blue Ash College

Modes of Photographic Vision - Art Exhibition

"Modes of Photographic Vision" header display

Exhibit Dates

February 8 - March 18, 2016

Modes of Photographic Vision - An Introduction

By H. Michael Sanders

Exhibit photograph - A dark figure with yellow background

The medium of photography has made the journey from its origin as a simple mimetic recording device, temporarily unseating traditional painting as a way to represent the objective reality of our world, to the fractured mosaic of practices and approaches that comprise contemporary photography as an art form and communications tool: formal, illustrative, metaphoric, conceptual, emotional, reportage, and so forth. Consistent in this array of approaches is the development and application of some mode of photographic vision.

Photographic vision can be defined as successfully finding your way through the morass of technical attributes surrounding the machine interface of the camera (or scanner). It is also overcoming the mental and sensory indolence derived from the utter ease of basic execution provided by modern micro-processor driven cameras. Finally, photographic vision is avoiding the stultifying effects of medium-specific and general fine art traditions.

Exhibit photograph -various objects in black and white

Photographic vision is, in the end, arriving at a highly personal and idiosyncratic manner of eluding and manipulating these pervasive features of the medium; features that function as constraints on the photographer/artist. What is evident in photographs that exhibit such photographic vision is the subjective intent and irrepressible impulses of the photographer to see mundane reality in a totally new perspective. The artists included in this group exhibition, despite the wide variety of techniques, styles, and processes seen in their work, all are drawn to a distinctly photographic mode of seeing and responding to the world.

The documentary use of photographs is applied in a novel way by Gregory Davis to present his anachronistic and fanciful constructions of technological media systems; constructions that suggest meandering patterns of thought about the technology surrounding us, and its surprising but inherent ephemeral nature.

The creative team of Haviland and Colagiovanni utilize photography in a similar documentary fashion, focusing on objects with their own ephemeral existences hurtling toward physical destruction, and do so in such a way that a palpable sense of time and motion is imparted to their transitioning subjects.

William Knipscher's mode of vision intertwines the photographic vocabulary of light and visual texture with that of physical manipulation and concrete texture to create a unique conceptual space within which the photographic vision is constructed on multiple, simultaneous levels. The resulting imagery emerges from a world far removed from objective reality while depicting it with photographic precision and presence.

Work Included In The Exhibition

Work in the exhibit - dark figures with orange background

Acknowledgements 

The UC Blue Ash Art Gallery is supported by the Office of the Dean and the departments of Art & Visual Communication and Electronic Media Communications. This exhibition is curated by H. Michael Sanders and John Wolfer. Gallery publications are edited by H. Michael Sanders and designed by Michael Ziepfel. John Wolfer is gallery director.

Resources

Contact Information

Phone: 513-936-1712
Email: bagaller@ucmail.uc.edu