| “After” consists of photographic impressions of life following (un)natural disasters. By taking an almost poetic approach to journalistic images, the photographs become the ciphers of a larger idea. These photographs are concerned with the intangible aspects of loss and memory, seeing not only what has been ravaged, but also the unexpected events and the otherworldliness of when events become strange and uncontrollable. These phenomena invite contemplation about why we allow these situations to happen and how, at the edges, we are aware of life’s struggle to take hold once again. |  |
After – John A. Bennette
“After” consists of photographic impressions of life following (un)natural disasters. By taking an almost poetic approach to journalistic images, the photographs become the ciphers of a larger idea. These photographs are concerned with the intangible aspects of loss and memory, seeing not only what has been ravaged, but also the unexpected events and the otherworldliness of when events become strange and uncontrollable. These phenomena invite contemplation about why we allow these situations to happen and how, at the edges, we are aware of life’s struggle to take hold once again.
The artists, Wyatt Gallery (a person not a place) and Will Steacy, both working in post-Katrina New Orleans, as well as Radek Skrivanek, who recorded the great environmental tragedy in Central Asia, have been brought together to make us stop and consider what we are doing. Historically, humans are at odds with nature; our ever-greater needs of the natural environment place nature under constant attack. Our current means of satisfying the basic needs of feeding, finding water and building shelter for a growing population disturbs a delicate balance. We see the evidence of our crimes, and whether we understand them or not, there is always a cause and effect; whatever happens, nature wins, and we are just a part of the process.
These three artists, with three different points of view and three different photographic techniques, create a dialog within the context of this gallery exhibition that is based upon the more serious of life’s realities today, but without being didactic. Behind the selection of each artist was a desire to create a cohesive presentation that would register with the viewer in terms of some sixth sense—some awareness that these 40-odd images could only heighten. The idea that they might understand much of this attempt, if not the whole of it, may be enough to steer the viewer toward making a difference in the way that they see and use our natural resources.
Many artists have been attracted to the recent history of the Crescent City of New Orleans, so it is no surprise that Wyatt Gallery and Will Staecy would go there too. The two are friends, and what may have begun as journalism and the recording of a city turned upside down became a long-term commitment, with both artists making many trips back. The hurricane and its aftermath are a given, but each artist found something different to say about the event here.
The Will Staecy images are from a series of works entitled “The Human Stain.” The power of these found and re-photographed snapshots and studio portraits reminds one of the overlooked details of life. When everything seems to be slipping away, most of us want to save the photographs of our family first and foremost. Today, one senses that these images are more like lost souls waiting to be found again. The personal photograph is the most powerful; it provides a sense of identity, is shared and held by most of us as a fetish through which, in a sense, to stop time.
Wyatt Gallery, in his series “Remnants After the Storm,” focused his camera on the community’s relics, homes, schools, hospitals and stacks of records and ideas, endowing each image with a feeling of what has been abandoned through the submissive and quiet grandeur of spaces waiting to be reclaimed. Each element awakens a sensory code that hints both at the rush to flee and the need to return.
“Aral Tengizi: Story of A Dying Sea,” a series by Radek Skrivanek, seems to be different. You come to a place that looks otherworldly: ships and buoys on a vast plain, a mythic sea that was once the fourth largest lake in the world. How and why is the viewer participating in this out-of-control dream? All of these stories start in the same place—a delicate, eroding natural biosphere—its wounds caused by man altering his environment without thinking about the domino effect.
In choosing these photographs, human beings were omitted; just their artifacts were to remain. The reason for this is so that the viewer will take the time necessary to search among the ephemera of another person’s changed circumstances—to come to some conclusions about how ordinary we all are, and how ordinary these events are to life’s cycle. Where a sea once stood, new life is beginning. In the fetid heat of a distressed, struggling neo-romantic New Orleans, new life blooms, and we are a part of it.
