Visit to CMP, Thurs. Nov. 3

Anita Six

Nov. 8 2011

Photo 131

Visit to CMP, Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011

                A black and white photo from a past decade hangs in the exhibition along with 141 other photographs taken by 43 photographers.  The exhibition is Seismic Shift: Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal and California Landscape Photography, 1944-1984.  This exhibition is part of a larger arts project which incorporates over 60 cultural institutions across Southern California.  The purpose is to celebrate the birth of the L.A. art scene.  This celebration began this past October and will continue to April 2012.

                The landscape photography at the California Museum of Photography, CMP, starts in the 1940s and moves through four decades to the 1980s.  It begins with the Zone System master, Ansel Adams, and ends with two New Topographics photographers, Lewis Baltz and Joe Deal.  What is represented in this exhibition are not just the few  beautifully  printed black and white landscapes of the early photographers, but photographs which focus on the altered landscape by man’s big ugly footprint.

                It is difficult to say which photograph is my favorite; however, since I must choose only one I would have to say it is Rondal Partridge’s, Pave it and Paint it Green, Yosemite Park, mid 1960s.  The transition from glorious landscape to the Partridge image of Half Dome along with a parking lot full of cars depicts the collision of nature and man. A scene that is repeated over and over in Seismic Shift.

                Pave it and Paint it Green, is a horizontal black and white print.  The bottom third of the photograph is crammed, and weighted down, with cars parked in zigzag parking spaces.  The photograph is taken from a higher vantage point with the tops of the cars closest to the camera clearly visible.  As the viewer’s eyes move up to the middle of the scene, there are pine trees which separate the bottom from the top.  The pine trees separate the cars from the top third of the photograph which has Half Dome in the distance.  Clearly, the automobile is the focal point along with a wee bit of sarcasm.

                Partridge has taken a photo of one of the most seen images in nature photography—Half Dome.  This is a place that many tourists like to escape to, and coupled it with a modern day convenience which is the antithesis of nature.