The Optical: a group exhibition juried by Allan Chasanoff
July 5 - 28, 2013
We've all had the experience of looking at a photograph and not being able to decipher it right away. We ask ourselves: "What am I looking at?" Photographer and collector Allan Chasanoff is a connoisseur of this moment; he finds visceral pleasure in confronting an image that refuses to make visual sense, delights in its resistance, and delights again when that resistance is overcome--a delicious tension and release.
"To be hit by a dislocation transcends the visual alone, and there is a momentary visceral response. It stuns me. It interrupts the stare and startles me. Thus, a major part of my effort in collecting pictures was to find those that did that. The photograph, the genre, the history and the aura of the picture are secondary to this shock. That is why I collected so-called straight images, for a dislocation in the usual."
Blue Sky invited Chasanoff to jury an international exhibition that celebrates this particular photographic phenomenon: The Optical. He graciously accepted and selected 36 images from more than 190 submissions. Every photograph is a "straight," single-exposure shot that has not been manipulated or altered in any way with image-editing software.
Exhibiting artists from the US, Canada, Germany, and France include: Blake Andrews, Hillary Atiyeh, Bill Bailey, Dietlinde Bamberger, Mary Ellen Bartley, Aryan Chappell, Thibault de Puyfontaine, Susan de Witt , Jeffrey Dionesotes, Ralph Gabriner, LeeAnn Gauthier, Barbara Gibson, George Greenstein, Martin Gremm, Curtis Hamilton, Harrison Higgs, Timothy Householder. Hannah Karsen, Ann Kendellen, Frank Lavelle, Stu Levy, Helen Maringer, Helena Martemucci, Larry Merrill, Graydon Miller, Alexis Pike, Quamar Salih, Stan Sherer, John Snyder, Joni Sternbach, Kirk Thompson, Donald Webb, Harry Wilks, David Wilson, Carol Yarrow, Yelena Zhavoronkova.
Allan Chasanoff spent nearly 20 years collecting more than 1,200 photographs--many of which embody this optical dilemma--and donated his collection to Yale University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Two publications feature images from his collection: First Doubt - Optical Confusion in Modern Photography: Selections from the Allan Chasanoff Collection (Yale University Press, 2008) and Tradition and the Unpredictable (D.A.P., 1994).