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Candid camera

The picture isn't everything at Brush

by Leon Nigrosh

BEYOND TRADITION: WOMEN IN PHOTOGRAPHY at the Brush Art Gallery, 256 Market Street, Lowell, through July 13.

Many photographers consider the image in the lens the endpoint. For the artists now showing at the Brush Gallery, in Lowell, it is only the beginning. Curator Linda Poras chose five Massachusetts artists who have taken the photographic image in different directions.

Somerville artist Anna Strickland adheres most closely to traditional photographic methods, taking pictures, printing in black and white using the typical silver gelatin technique or producing sepia-toned Kallitype prints and blue cyanotypes. In each case, the finished image is a view of a ladder in situ.

In fact, Strickland has been obsessively photographing ladders for more than 15 years. This has culminated in her latest installation created especially for this exhibition. Memory Palace is a walk-in cubicle covered from floor to ceiling with photos of ladders -- ladders on swimming docks, ladders leaning against houses, ladders going down holes, ladders in trees -- you get the idea. Strickland has even included actual ladders in the mix: little chopstick ladders, tiny constructed metal ladders, big wooden ladders, and my favorite, a rusted fire-escape ladder bent askew. Why ladders? Strickland says, "Ladders are for me a memory trace not unlike the mnemonic memory systems devised in the Middle Ages. All things are remembered by and in association with particular ladder images."

Jacqueline Bernat doesn't consider her finished work to be photography. She refers to her pieces as sculptures based on a particular photo image. Her wall sculpture, Mentor, consists of nine thick white candles perched vertically between two boxes, one with a photo of a hand, the other wrapped with photos of tied rope. Memorial has a large photograph of a circle of barbed wire placed over a shelf where four steel bowls, each containing nails, steel shavings, and a candle sit.

Bernat's works serve as contemplative objects designed to evoke one's emotions. Even with her Icarus, with its tall tapers and bucket of coal and feathers, one is left to decide what part of the myth, if any, is being played out before us.

You might wonder what Elizabeth Solomon's small images, framed in gold leaf, are doing in a photography show. But these intimate glimpses into her life and surroundings are indeed photos. Solomon has completely over-painted the entire surface with alkyd paints, taking hand-coloring to its highest level. Photos capture fleeting moments and paint makes them endure. This fixed instant is particularly evident in Just One More Chapter where, through a doorway, a girl is propped on one elbow reading in bed. In Reflection a pensive young woman lingers next to an oval mirror wearing a camisole.

By using photos as the basis for her interior shots, such as Stairs to Orange Hallway, Solomon can devote more attention to the nuances of color instead of worrying about the details of perspective, angles, and planes.

In almost complete opposition to Solomon's quiet intimacy, Aida Laleian's computer manipulated photographs are charged metamorphic images of figures half-human and half-beast. By blending the cherubic visage of her young daughter with the winged body of a garden sculpture gryphon in one untitled picture, or grafting deer legs onto a provocative self-portrait in another, Laleian brings startling mythological creatures right into our own back yards. A 30-foot-long montage of tiny photos culled from French manuscripts and assembled by Maryjean Viano Crowe rounds out this captivating exhibition.

The Brush Art Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. Call 459-7819.