INTO ITS OWN

PHOTOGRAPHY AT COLBY: RECENT ACQUISITIONS AND THE PROMISED GIFT OF DR. WILLIAM TSIARAS AND NANCY MEYER TSIARAS
On view at Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine
From October 3, 2004 to February 13, 2005

Reviewed by Laurie Meunier Graves

If there are any doubts that photography has come into its own as an art form, then Photography at Colby: Recent Acquisitions and the Promised Gift of Dr. William Tsiaras and Nancy Meyer Tsiaras should dispel such a notion. This outstanding exhibition shows the broad range and the possibilities of photography, and it does so without feeling disjointed, not a given with so many different photographers, so many different styles, and such a broad span of years (from the early twentieth century to the present).

In Photography at Colby, there are photographs of fields, of a looping freeway, of modern ruins, and of people. Some are in color; others are in black and white. Some are vivid and crisp; others have the look of charcoal drawings. There is even a pair that depicts Leda and the Swan in the fuzzy, somewhat cloying style of the early 1900s.

Photography at Colby is such a rich, varied exhibit that I can only give a few examples of what it has to offer. However, I hope this will encourage readers who live within driving distance to come to Colby College Museum of Art and view the myriad aspects of photography and its wonderful diversity.

Two of the most striking photographs—Classroom in School #5, Pripyat and Music Theory Classroom in School #5, Pripyat— were taken by Robert Polidori. These huge color photographs show two classrooms in utter devastation and decay and chaos. In Classroom in School #5, there is rubble everywhere. Some of the walls have peeled back to the brick underneath, and the paint has flaked off in huge chunks. Small blue desks, forlorn and abandoned, are covered by debris, and some have tipped over on their sides. Above them hang rusty light fixtures that look as though they have been dark for a long time. The room in Music Theory is in a similar state. The desolation is made complete by the one piano that sits gutted in a corner, its innards sprawled on top of the keys.

Both photographs have the feeling of menace and foreboding. Schoolrooms should not look like this. What in the world happened to School #5? What happened, of course, was Chernobyl, and the town of Pripyat was a casualty of the terrible accident at that nuclear power plant. Unfortunately, when I visited Colby Museum, there was neither a brochure nor a catalog to go with this exhibit. However, some research on the Internet led me to the Globalist.com and a description of Polidori’s work as well as his book Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl. The photographs at Colby are part of a series of images Polidori took in three days in May 2001 of the town of Pripyat, abandoned in 1986 after the accident. According to the Globalist, “more than 116,000 people were permanently evacuated from the area surrounding the nuclear power plant.” The Globalist describes Pripyat as a “dead zone,” and that is exactly what those poor little classrooms look like.

For a completely different tone, there is Nina Katchadourian’s elegiac and evocative The Story of Why Stina’s Nightgown Became too Small, a series of sixteen pieces with accompanying text. In this series, Katchadourian uses photography as a way of telling a story, a search for a time past, and an examination of family, continuity, and change that span three generations. Katchadourian writes, “Every year on my mother Stina’s birthday, my grandmother Nunni dressed her in a handmade nightgown and took her outside to be photographed. This tradition continued until the birthday when Stina could no longer fit into the nightgown.”

Most of the photographs were taken in July on Pörtö, a small group of islands in the Finnish archipelago (the family lived in Helsinki). Katchadourian decided to insert herself into the project by traveling to the places where her mother was photographed to get a current picture of the spot. She then displays them side by side, pictures of her mother as a child next to pictures of the place as it is now.

Not surprisingly, the series begins with a large photograph of the nightgown. It has blue piping, little pearly buttons, and is stained and yellowed with age. It looks old fashioned, and it sets the tone for what follows.

The actual photographs of Stina start in 1939 when she is a toddler with chubby cheeks and short, wispy hair. The nightgown with the blue piping goes all the way to the ground and the sleeves are a little too long. In 1940, the hair is fuller, and Stina’s little feet can be seen beneath the nightgown. And so it goes. The child—blonde, pretty, and slim—stays with the nightgown until 1950, at which point it is well above her knees. 1951 is the turning point when Stina can no longer squeeze into the nightgown. Teenaged Stina holds it in front of herself, and, behind it, we can see her long, bare legs and slim arms. Stina is no longer a child, and as the mother of two grown daughters, I must admit it brought tears to my eyes to “watch” her outgrow her nightgown. Indeed, as I traveled down the row of pictures, it seemed as though I were taking a poignant trip through the various ages of girl, and when I was done, I felt as melancholy as Jaques in As You Like It.

Finally, for a style that is completely different from either Polidori or Katchadourian, there are Wrestlers #4 and Wrestlers #7 by Diana Michener. These large black and white photographs depict two nudes, a man and a woman, grappling with each other. We don’t see their faces. In one, we see the woman’s twisted torso and the man’s arm looping across her back. In the next, we see the man’s torso in all its hairy splendor as he grips the feet and legs that presumably belong to the woman. Both pictures are soft and blurry, and they almost look like drawings rather than photographs. The softness belies the erotic yet hard tone of the photographs. This man and woman are engaged in a struggle, and going by the second photograph, where he has her by the feet, I would have to say that the woman is losing. At least for now.

Photography at Colby is the second exhibit I’ve seen in recent months where the work was the generous gift of collectors. (The first was the German Expressionist exhibit at the Portland Museum of Art.) To my way of thinking, these gifts are as important as any gift of land could be. They reflect a piece of cultural history and will be available for future generations to see, ponder, and appreciate. 

 

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