Dreams developed in the darkroom

Dreams developed in the darkroom SALEM - Does photography record external reality or does it create its own, self-contained reality? Both, of course. Uelsmann practices what he calls "post-visualization. What Yosemite was for Adams, or the street for Garry Winogrand, the darkroom is for Uelsmann: his artistic home, the stage where he best practices his artistry. That would be "previsualization,'' to use the term Ansel Adams made famous. Instead, he takes his pictures and considers how they might be combined, after the fact, to become his ultimate image. "As far as I'm concerned,'' Uelsmann has said, "the darkroom is truly capable of being a visual research laboratory, a place of discovery, observation, and meditation. Like Duane Michals or Jeff Wall, Uelsmann stages his photographs. That search for something beyond led White to the vatic and gassy, it led Uelsmann to the incongruous and comic. It says a lot about both men that each would probably take his assigned noun as a compliment. White turned on its head William Carlos Williams's mighty injunction to American writers and artists - "no ideas but in things. Uelsmann's debt to Surrealism is obvious - and one he acknowledges. Once the joke is gotten or the puzzle solved, it ceases to give pleasure. The danger with Surrealism is that it's all punch line - "Oh, I get it!'' - with little or no subsequent comedy. Certain subjects recur throughout the show - lips, trees, women (often unclothed), hands, water, shorelines, animals - but what Uelsmann does with them is never predictable (other than in its unpredictability). In "Mechanical Man lsmann's "fanciful, intricate, and technically brilliant montages have been broadly influential, but not widely followed. "All American Sunset,'' from 1971, is a miss. The conceit could be worse. Here at least he holds the fries. '' Yes and no. It's only one consideration, but also the most important consideration, since in the end Uelsmann has just one subject: his own imagination. Dreams developed in the darkroom Trade News selected by Local Linkup on 19/02/2012