Robert Frost once wrote, “No surprise in the poet, no surprise in the reader.” Sitting behind the desk here at JBG, I have the wonderfully unique experience of seeing the reactions of the people who visit the gallery. Just now, I watched a woman react to the image above with disbelief and amusement. It is a sure testament to Beth Dow’s current work “Ruins” when visitors to the Gallery question what they see. This is one of the many magical instances where art photography is uniqely engaging. In her artist statement, Dow admits to us that she “[approaches] these pictures as a tourist.” This sort of honesty speaks to that engaging element of surprise from both the artist's perspective and, subsequently, the viewer’s.
What surprises me about these pictures is the way in which they offer the uncanny reality of an unknown American landscape. Visitors to the gallery often ask if the images are enhanced suspecting that the artist may have digitally inserted these ‘ruins’ onto the scene. No, we say, these places actually exist! William Meyers, photography critic for the Wall Street Journal, seems to suggest that Dow’s work contains a kind of layered irony in the fact of the existence of the ‘ruins’ and in the way that they are then found, photographed, and printed. In his review of the show, he writes that “Ms. Dow's platinum-palladium prints have the look of 19th century photographs of actual antiquities, a final jest.”
Joke or not, the work contains multitudes. On certain days, the images read as unusually depressing indications of cultural decline; other days, they become humorous depictions of surreality. This transformation that the photographs undergo, describing something different in the eye of the beholder, creates space for the possibility of continual surprise with every viewing. And that the pictures ultimately ask us to reflect on our own humanity is, in my opinion, Dow’s greatest success. “While genuine ruins remind us of our own mortality,” Dow says. “[T]hey also suggest the opposite by showing it’s possible to endure, even if only in a reduced and degraded form.”
To be surrounded by such poetry is a rare treat.
"Ruins" will be on display until May 16, 2009. Click here to read the review from the Wall Street Journal.
