OCTOBER 2000
FLORIDA PHOTOGENESIS: THE WORK OF CREATIVE / EXPERIMENTAL PHOTOGRAPHERS IN FLORIDA
By Allys Palladino-Craig
director, FSU Fine Arts Museum
It seems so natural to think of photography as a fine art form today that we forget how recently it was regarded as an upstart medium, a stepchild of other two-dimensional arts like painting or printmaking.
For a very long time, we treated the camera exclusively as a tool for documentation or as a friendly way of making a keepsake: tourists at the turn of the 20th century brought home "Kodaks" of the picturesque scenery they encountered, or of interesting events they witnessed.
The new exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Florida Photogenesis, is a dynamic look at a particular group of artists working at academic institutions in this state - artists who made a serious bid for the attention of the mainstream art world. Chronicled by artist /photo historian Robert W. Fichter, the exhibition opens Oct. 6 and continues through Nov. 19 before traveling to the Appleton Museum in Ocala and the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach.
The catalogue, written by Fichter, contains an interview with Van Deren Coke, who established the first "creative experimental" photographic beachhead in the late '50s at the University of Florida. He went on to other prestigious positions at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House (Rochester, New York), at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and at the University of New Mexico. He will deliver a public lecture at 7 p.m. on Oct. 5 in the lecture hall of the Fine Arts Building.
With the concept and mentoring provided by Fichter, the vivid works of a dozen artists have been called together for this exhibition - works that reach from the narrative environments of Fichter's own dark Southern humor to the surreal imagery of Van Deren Coke or the suspended logic of Jerry Uelsmann and Doug Prince.
Oscar Bailey took photographs in unusual formats using a 360-degree camera, while other artists believed in aesthetic manipulation of their imagery (Evon Streetman, Todd Walker, David Yager), and some scarcely took photographs at all; they simply used them - for example, George Blakely's sculpture of thousands of refuse snapshots from a photo processing store, wired together into a "Cubic Foot of Photographs" or Tyler Turkle's poured-acrylic silhouettes on movie stills.
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Californian Virgil Mirano brought innovative photographic technology to Florida when he captured the diaphanous shadows of people and things in his large wall-tapestries of diazo paper and cloth, whereas Wally Wilson actually illuminated large transparencies to create eerie "Distorted Transmissions" in a recent series.
Fichter has cast a long shadow in terms of active service in cultural initiatives across the state, and in terms of influence for generations of students; he is one of the acknowledged pioneers in the realm of experimental photography - to which Van Deren Coke insisted, and rightly so, that the adjective "creative" be linked.
Florida Photogenesis brackets the careers of the artists with works created in their early days right up to their current careers, a project supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Florida Arts Council.
These artists have been a peripatetic lot - several traveled to new posts while others traveled and taught as visiting artists, maintaining their academic positions in Florida. In the time-honored tradition of artist-scholars, they have shared their insights and their technical achievements with students who will no doubt cross and recross the United States, if not the world.
Fichter begins his essay by writing that If Todd Walker were alive today, he would say that this exhibition is about "funny picture makers."
He goes on to set the context of the exhibition by commenting that: "The title of the exhibition, Florida Photogenesis: The Work of Creative and Experimental Photographers in Florida, may indeed be too broad, for as with its underground rivers there are many different streams of photography that have arisen in Florida.
There have certainly been many fine artists /teachers supported by the state university system who have used photography as their creative means. There were of course those who used the medium in the straight tradition; however if we look at the work of artists in the academic institutions, we can see that there was a particular group of artists / photographers, beginning with Van Deren Coke's presence at the University of Florida in 1958, and extending to Florida State University and the University of South Florida, who were committed to very different agendas than those held by more traditional photographic artists.
Although urban avant-garde art centers such as Chicago and Los Angeles offered support for such experimental activities, in the southeast only the academic institutions in Florida were actively supporting artists who were stretching the boundaries of photography."
The Museum invites the public to visit weekdays 9-4 p.m., or weekends from 1-4 p.m. To arrange for a tour or an after-hours visit for groups, please call 644-1299. Please join us for the lecture of Professor Coke on Oct. 5, 7 p.m. and the opening on Oct. 6 from 7-9 p.m., or just enjoy the exhibition on your own. A walking tour with author Robert Fichter will be scheduled: dial 644-6836 x1 for updates.
The exhibition closes Nov. 19 at 4 p.m.