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Human Conditions

 

Tracking Developments at MAP

By Mike Giuliano

The 12 photographers showcased in the Maryland Art Place exhibit "Human Conditions" respond to that broad topic in ways that range from black-and-white documentary images to color shots whose manipulated imagery is more theatrical than realistic.

You're free to choose your own favorites and to make whatever thematic connections you care to- but the documentarians certainly make a strong showing.

What links the real-life visions is their ability to make you con-template very plain or even ugly landscapes that you might ordinarily ignore. Also, they're interested in the interplay between the natural and manmade environ-ments, and in bringing out the formal compositional qualities of urban sprawl.

Edward Winter's two black-and-white photographs of noise abate- ment barriers are a case in point. These obtrusive walls cut across the landscape and, regardless of whether they reduce traffic noise, they do reduce any sense of a naturally flowing landscape. Winter's most haunting shot, however, is a black-and-white image of a parking lot. Its regularly spaced white lines give the image some compositional rigor, and its street lights serve as an ironic vertical complement for the trees in the background.

Also observing the developed American landscape with black-and-white photos is Ed Worteck. His deliberately underwhelming images include "Philadelphia, PA, 9/04," in which two graffiti-covered railroad freight cars seem stranded on tracks amidst what might be termed an industrial meadow.

Large chemical tanks fill much of the background. You'd never call this a pretty picture, but Worteck is able to make you think about a setting in which neither nature nor industry is at its best.