One might worry that yet another high school photography show taking over both the Corner Gallery’s front windows and the Art Center Ukiah space in the back of the gallery could be a little repetitious… maybe even “I’ve seen it before”. That might indeed be the case if the person teaching the photography classes and organizing the show were anyone besides Lech Slocinski.
Lech is the absolute antithesis of the same old. He has a mind that won’t rest on last year’s success, and he appears to be happiest when pushing the envelope on theme, format and/or technique. Last year’s fabulous show focused on Lech’s eagerness to explore, and even embrace, the controversial introduction of AI into the world of art. And this year he is on a totally different track… which is the relationship between photography and time.
“Moments” is the title of this show. The challenge refers to the inherent definition of what photography is. Lech started by asking his students a question, “What is the essence of photography?” He told them about Richard Avedon, a brilliant American photographer who once stated “A photograph is the death of the moment.” Lech asked his students what they thought about that – did they agree or not. “Most,” Lech says, “did not agree. They said a photo preserves an event – it doesn’t allow the event to go out of existence. I think they had a valid point… the lack of a definitive answer leads right back to the question about photography that started the discussion… what is it?”
Lech referred to the ideas of Roland Barthes, a French philosopher and critic who wrote one of the most influential study of photography in 1980. “Barthes,” Lech explained, “was interested in how photography differs from film and other visual arts… in his critical exploration of the topic. He says photography ‘presents’ and paintings ‘represent.’ That means photography is non-human, chemical, mechanical, and now electronic as opposed to art created by the human hand holding a paintbrush. Two photographers can take an almost identical photo of the same object, but two painters will never paint two identical portraits of the same model.” The notion of time in photography was also expressed by French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson who formed the famous concept of the “decisive moment”, when timing, recognition of the potential, composition, and skills of a photographer merge in an instance.
Continuing his discussion about the challenges presented to his students for this show, Lech added, “Now we have Photoshop with all the tools and filters that artists can use to manipulate images. So we need to readjust our concepts of what photography is not only as opposed to painting but also to the traditional definition. Photography is now more interpretive than it used to be. It is an image making process. All of the photographs in the show have been processed to various degrees in Photoshop or other apps. They have been cropped and manipulated to change the contrast, color saturation, figure/ground relationship and a dozen other things. So what we believed before that paintings are expressive and photographs are factual is not as true as it used to be.
Almost fifty years ago, Susan Sontag, an American writer and critic, stated that taking photographs has become the main way of experiencing and interacting with reality. She had no idea that Facebook and Instagram would be in the future, when we take pictures constantly with gazillions of moments being captured and shared.
Having raised the question about what photography is in relation to painting, Lech is comfortable with the lack of a single correct answer. He takes the discussion back to where he started with the concept of moments. “Photography is the eternal chase of moments that flee the instance you take the photo,” he says. It’s always ‘has been’, a death at birth. But it also looks into the future – us patiently waiting for that moment, a unique light obscured by a cloud, perfect tilt of a head, a glance, or a foot lifting off the ground that will be immortalized the moment we press the shutter button on our cameras. Preserving the moments for the future, that’s what my students have done in so many beautiful and creative ways. And now I have to cull out 120 of the very best photos for the show from over 1200 that could be included!”
