In art, as in life, context is key. An image that would otherwise be treated with contempt — or worse, blithe indifference — can be illuminated with only a few facts. Likewise, stripped of its context, a piece of art can become something else entirely as the viewer imagines a contextual framework for the art. This is the premise of a new photography exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Unknown Elements, which features 26 photos from the museum’s collection “about which some details are unknown.” Displayed in Gallery 212, the photographs range in date from the mid-19th century to the present day and are accompanied by written works from local writers — poems, short stories and other responses paired to selected images to serve as a “prompt” for viewers’ own reflections.
It is a fascinating and playful approach that allows visual art and writing — two forms that have always been compatible — to comment on the role imagination plays in photography. By omitting a photograph’s date, photographer or subject, part of its ownership is surrendered and given over to the viewer to make his or her own conclusions.
A woman with a white question mark emblazoned on her torso stands in front of an ocean in a trench coat and bowler hat. A hand-colored print depicting an Algerian woman “Prepared for Going Out.” Photography is abstract enough without elisions, but by making certain aspects anonymous, they become puzzles impossible to solve.
The five local writers — Matt Hart, Sarah Rose Nordgren, Albert Pyle, Leah Stewart and CityBeat contributor Kathy Y. Wilson — suggest their own creative interpretations in various forms that include the poetical, epistolary and essayistic. Hart offers a kind of strikethrough poem in list format, with phrases like “2. How the west was wonder is — like a grammar” and “10. The life one wishes to preserve becomes a blur” complicating his chosen picture, a fuzzy black-and-white snapshot of a man smiling between two wooden sculptures.
Other writers invest a narrative into their prompt, like Stewart chose to do with a mysterious overexposed photo of women with and without blindfolds titled “Revelations.” “I am the one whose face you cannot see, but does that make me one of the blindfolded or one of the obscured?” she asks, as if telling a riddle.
If the photographs — mostly monochrome and shown here for the first time — are also meant to allow a glimpse into the types of images the museum is interested in adding to its permanent photography collection, they represent an ambitious scope of time and style. Portraits, postcards and snapshots from around the world hint at a well-rounded accumulation that aims to trace the trajectory of photography as a fledgling curiosity to its many movements in the 20th century.
How this exercise can confront contemporary issues in image-making is a question the exhibit doesn’t attempt to answer. It seems, though, that in a culture in which images are being devalued and produced so rapidly, context is something that might be turning into a privilege rather than an assurance. Although the curator presumably displayed photographs taken by established artists (I am guessing here, as they were already within the museum’s collection; some could very well be amateur works, though), it might have been interesting to see the writers inform images we witness daily without much context — from Instagram, Snapchat or other intangible areas.
A sure standout is Wilson’s piece, which accompanies a vivid photo taken in 1976 of an athlete bent over a water fountain (Wilson interprets the subject as Bruce Jenner, now known as Caitlyn). An excellent cultural pulse-taker, she observes this moment and offers it a brisk message from the future. In a room of quiet contemplation, it is the certainty of her voice that makes it louder than the others.
The exhibit’s main intrigue lies in its ability to turn the opening sentence of this review inside out. Art is not a puzzle; you can still understand it without references. Without a paragraph of text describing an image, the role of artist can be partially given to the observer as they are urged to define the image themselves, to bestow “meaning,” a barometer by which art is measured perhaps too often. While visiting, one is inclined to revisit a line in Stewart’s piece, which summed up the exhibit in her quietly tectonic contribution: “Without obscurity,” she writes, “there are no revelations.”
UNKNOWN ELEMENTS is on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum through Nov. 8. More info: cincinnatiartmuseum.org.
This article appears in Aug 26 – Sep 1, 2015.
