Tinted windows

Rosemary LeBeau's latest photos demand our full attention

by Leon Nigrosh

COLORING IN -- AND OUTSIDE THE LINES: HANDCOLORED PHOTOGRAPHS At the Gordon Library, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, through November 15.

Hand-colored photography has a rich history dating back more than 150 years. Throughout the decades, this enterprise has been almost exclusively conducted by women, with a few notable exceptions. Many men famous for their tinted pictures, like Mathew Brady (1823-1896) and Southworth and Hawes of Boston, employed talented young women to hand color their portraits and landscapes. The current exhibition at WPI's Gordon Library contains 29 images created by five area women photographers, each with her own personal approach to the intricate task of staying inside the lines, or not. The photographic images made by Mari Seder are the most literal and traditional. Subtitling her presentation, "Scenes From Streets and Back Roads," she has concentrated her pictorial efforts on recording actual landscapes. Then through her choice of tonal overlays, she engenders a feeling of intimacy.

In her On the Way Back from Rancho Aurora, Oaxaca, Seder directs our attention to the receding mule-drawn wagon by coloring it more strongly than its surroundings. The effect is even more pronounced because, unlike a normal black-and-white photo, she has faded the distant sandy mountains into the color of the sky. By downplaying the colors of walls and roadway and, instead, highlighting the tiny flowerpots on the window ledges, Seder subtly shifts the emphasis in her streetscape On the Way to Spiaggia Bianca, Lipari to create an intriguing staged set.

Westborough photographer Nancy Engberg also works with pictures of existing scenes, but by using very thin applications of oil paint, she turns them into misty, moody dreamscapes. Although her Columns I-IV was shot in a long abandoned section of the Crane estate in Ipswich, Engberg's applied pastel tones create images that transport us to some European mansion. Looking at the spectral interiors and the outdoor stone balusters surrounding the deserted patio, one can easily imagine proper ladies and gentlemen engaged in a waltz.

Donna Hamil Talman attempts the reverse of Engberg's approach. Instead of turning the mundane into a dreamlike vision, Talman tries to make her night dreams into photographs. Crediting the work of photographer/dream interpreter, Maria Muller as inspiration, Talman writes her own dream scenarios in pencil on paper and then displays them alongside appropriately composed, tinted photos.

Lora Brueck, the show's curator, departs from recognizable imagery altogether with her series of hand-colored abstract photographs. Yellow lines geometrically intersect and diverge from each other on a purple field. Warm-toned organic forms populate another image, and in Silvered, even though Brueck wants us to resist the urge to see something that is not there, we can envision icy slivers of mercury as they slither across shimmering rain-soaked terrazzo.

For her latest efforts, Rosemary LeBeau completely eschews the camera and instead manipulates appropriated images, using a simple transfer process to create bizarre photocopies, which she meticulously hand colors. The works unfold their secrets slowly. Even to the untrained eye, Sometimes Sin Comes Back to Haunt You is a simple mirror image of grandparents watching a toddler. Immediately we see that the child is rendered as a Siamese twin. Then we notice that the man on the left has no glasses while the man on the right does. The woman on the left has her eyes open, the eyes on the right are closed. There is a monkey in the left window, and so on, deeper and deeper.

LeBeau literally adds another dimension to her work by mounting several of her images in shadow boxes beneath glass with sandblasted elements that increase the dramatic effect. In I Dream Awake . . . school children repose on a greensward (wherever did she find the original picture?) while on the glass above we see the overflight of a squadron of WW II and Korean War bombers. Suddenly the idyllic turns horrific. When asked about this seeming dichotomy, LeBeau wryly suggested that maybe the bombers were about to drop candy.

The epitome of LeBeau's series is Bye Bye Butterfly. The subtly hand-tinted image at first appears to be a youngster in a pleasant garden setting, with hands outstretched to the three etched butterflies flitting about on the covering glass. The brightest colors are on the wings of a Danaus plexippus set in the air space between. The flora of the abundant garden becomes recognizable as tiny skulls, demons, grotesques, and all manner of creepy-crawly things. No single negative, no matter how ingeniously contrived, could capture a feeling of nostalgia and give you the willies at the same time. LeBeau's latest works demand, and command, our full attention. n

The Gordon Library is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and on Sunday from noon to 11 p.m. Call 831-5410.