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View master
Bringing sculptural strategies to photography, Deborah Garwood documents and interprets.
By JEFFREY CYPHERS WRIGHT
Offoffoff.com
Deborah Garwood brings a sculptor's eye to her photography. The results have a tactile sensibility and all around vantage that one might predict from her former discipline. The photographs in her most recent show are of the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris on the evening of the equinox. As a subject, the park illuminates many of her concerns such as the dialogue between nature and architecture and the tension between the real and the ideal.
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| DEBORAH GARWOOD |
Exhibition: Paris at Spring Equinox, 2004: Parc des Buttes Chaumont.
Photographs by: Deborah Garwood.
Related links:
Official site
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Talking about the evolution from sculpture to photography, Garwood states: "I began to study the history of photography, particularly the photography of sculpture." She was given access to the Rodin archives where boxes of photographs were arranged by statue. "All the photographs of 'The Burghers of Calais,' taken by different photographers with all different cameras, are in one box. Suddenly I saw photography as a flexible and heterodox medium."
Consequently, Garwood has worked with many different cameras, papers and printing techniques, all of which support her multi-faceted view of photography. Most of her work has been in silver gelatin prints but the new works are digital prints on non-glossy paper. This provides a soft resonance that one could equate to the quality of an engraving.
The Parc des Buttes Chaumont is on the site of an ancient quarry. In the mid-19th century, Napoleon III commissioned Baron von Haussmann to transform it from a ruinous landscape where prisoners were executed into a charming park. At the time, the Belle Epoch, the park's sinister past became a liberating, seductive force and Proust wrote about it as a trysting place, especially for homosexuals. Yet it also represented centralized authority as did other projects by Haussmann such as the Champs Elysees, which transformed Paris from a medieval city into a well-planned (and controlled) megalopolis.
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| | Temple View II
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As Garwood strolls through the park, she celebrates these co-existent motifs along with her own visual peregrinations. The viewer is able to fill in missing pieces as an ambulatory sensibility is fostered. For instance, the Temple is observed from several spots, creating a context and expanding the camera's restrictive lens.
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| The photographs in her most recent show are of the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris on the evening of the equinox. | |
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The Temple itself is a response to the landscape and Garwood uses it superbly to create her own compositions. In Temple from a Distance I, the cleaved surfaces of the quarry on the left are balanced on the right by an airy filigree of sky and trees. The last amber strains of sun catch the temple on top completing the ensemble. In addition to the masterful composition, the gradation of colors and shades testifies to Garwood's skillful technique. In Temple from a Distance II, the conical shape of the temple rhymes with the buttes, which in turn rhyme with their own reflection in a lake at the bottom of the picture.
Temple View II, takes us inside the temple and looks out across the city. Here, Garwood uses classical composition elements to frame a pillar. Rails that further serve to "bookend" the pillar accentuate the horizon line. The foreground of trees is delicately etched — each branch recognizable in the tangle — and gives way to buildings on the Parisian skyline. The top half of the horizontal picture is the evening sky, which is itself divided into pinks and blues, grays and whites. Looking closely, graffiti is evident on the column, undercutting the rarified vision and bringing us back to earth.
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| | The images become surreal and magical — the juxtapositions of nature, utility and artifice unite. |
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Another sequence of photos studies a grotto highlighted by a small waterfall cascading through a crevice. Here, the images become surreal and magical — the juxtapositions of nature, utility and artifice unite.
At first, Garwood's work may appear as a "stroll in the park." On looking closer we see that in the process of expanding our vision, she has transported us.
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AUGUST 27, 2005
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