Would anyone dispute the notion that we live in a color-saturated world when it comes to images, still or moving? Unless you're a avid follower of old films, you probably haven't seen a black-and-white movie in some time.
As for photography, the heyday of black and white is long gone. And it may seem strange to recall that only a little more than three decades ago, color was suspect in the world of art photographs.
Still, black and white survives. A prime practitioner, Michael Kenna, who trained in his native England but lives in the Bay Area, has an exhibition at the Joseph Bellows Gallery.
As long as there are photographers like him, black and white will have a fine future, too. His approach is peripatetic. In one series, you'll find him in Japan. In another, in the South Pacific.
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“Michael Kenna: New York City & Mont St. Michel,” and “Robb Johnson”
When: Through Nov. 8
Where: Joseph Bellows Gallery, 7661 Girard Ave., La Jolla
Tickets: Free
Phone: (858) 456-5620
Online: josephbellows.com
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The current show contains 46 pictures taken in contrasting places: New York City and the French isle of Mont St. Michel, with its remarkable abbey. Kenna's photographs of each are equally deft.
His Manhattan isn't gritty or grimy. What interests him about it, consistent with series past, is the way a city produces beauty, in its bridges and architecture. He's interested in the angle that yields a soaring view of the Brooklyn Bridge, as it extends toward New York. Then, there's a view of the Chrysler Building (in what his calls “Study 3” from 2006) that isolates the upper portion against a tall expanse of cloud-streaked sky, its pointed spire looking as if it's about to pierce one of those clouds.
Kenna embraces the spectacular aspects of the city: buildings luminous by night (“Midtown, High View, New York, New York,” 2006) and the skyline layered with an ethereal looking haze (“Hudson River Ferry, New York, New York,” 2000). (This second picture has a melancholy dimension, since it includes the World Trade Center.)
He is just as interested in seeing places on a small scale. He pictures a Central Park bench by night and Gramercy Park covered with snow. Both places have an aura of tranquillity and silence to them. There's no sign of humanity.
In fact, look at any of Kenna's New York pictures and you won't find evidence of bustle. It's as if he's extracted a Platonic ideal of the city from the real New York. It's a seductive place, familiar but also fresh.
There's a spiritual hush to many of Kenna's pictures and Mont St. Michel lends itself well to this aspect of his photography. The abbey on the islet, built between the 11th and 16th centuries, is an architectural wonder. But Kenna isn't interested in highlighting its Gothic architecture so much as capturing the essence of the place.
You see the magic to his method in “Floating Abbey, Mont St. Michel, Normandy France” (2000). We see the abbey from afar, the water surrounding it looking unnaturally still. It appears almost separate from real time and natural colors would have likely broken the spell. He favors night in this series, which fits the stark look of the abbey and the surrounding village.
Nocturnal worlds
Robb Johnson favors night, too. His photographs, also on view at the Joseph Bellows Gallery, and, like Kenna's work, are black and white, but mistier and moodier.
Nine pictures by the Los Angeles-based photographer span different series and places. The almost mystically bright window in one image is identified as “Window Shutter Study, Venice. Italy” (2003). A shadowy architectural study is called “Terrace Study, New York City” (2006).
But some aren't linked to any specific place. Nor do they need to be. “Carousel” (2008) seems as if it could exist just as easily in a dream scene as in the real world. In “Window and Pillar” (2007), the lit window floats in a dark plane, as if untethered from a building.
In his biography, Johnson talks about Italian old masters as an inspiration. But these pictures seem closer in spirit to brooding 19th-century romantics like Caspar David Friedrich. Like those painters, Johnson looks for mystery and a spiritual dimension in the places he pictures.
