Gallery Plan B wasn’t kidding when it named its five-photographer show “Photography: Process and Perspective.”
Most of the five artists use techniques that are winningly eccentric; indeed, in most of their works, process overshadows subject matter.
The most stylistically conventional works are by Kermit Berg, who documents old-fashioned windows and staircases in black and white (second from bottom).
David Young photographs the unstable surfaces of water in unexpected shades of amber and blue, though his most interesting image juxtaposes the reflection of windows in plate glass against a background of ambient greenery (bottom).
Charlie Gaynor produces a pair of large color images on brushed aluminum, including a particularly impressive work featuring dozens of varied caps seemingly hung on a wall (top); the wall’s pockmarked surface meshes deftly with the imperfections in the metallic substrate.
Using a preposterously complicated approach, Marc Sirinsky photographs images using a modified 1930s-era camera; these are then edited, scanned, edited again, converted to a two-color scale, printed by inkjet, then finally transferred by hand to a surface of rice paper or metal. There is a payoff—-impressionistic, exquisitely gossamer portrayals of landscapes (second from top), often marked by large vertical features like cell towers.
Like several of her fellow exhibitors, Donna Cameron prints some of her works on metal, but unlike the dull, silvery surfaces of her colleagues, Cameron’s include some that are slightly coppery and highly reflective; this medium (technically, silver nitrate on silver foil backed by gold dibond) works especially well when portraying images of objects that are themselves metal,
such as a tea kettle.
Even more impressive are Cameron’s large-scale works on silver dibond; their color flourishes suggest painting far more than photography. Of special note is “Peterborough Forest” (middle), a through-the-window view of a fantastical landscape portrayed in hues that would make the Fauvists proud.
The show is on view Wednesdays to Saturdays noon to 7 p.m. and Sundays 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. through July 21 at Gallery Plan B, 1530 14th St. NW.
