Elaine Ling's compelling photographs of five summer visits to Mongolia are now on the walls of Iris BookCafe. The exhibition reflects Ling’s visits to Mongolia made between 2002 and 2006. The people living there are moving cautiously into contemporary times, more 20th than 21st century.
Elaine Ling’s Mongolia shows us a landscape that lends itself to black and white, a culture that seems of another time, a people pleasantly without guile. She uses a 4-by-5-inch view camera with Type 55 Polaroid film, which produces an instant print that she can give to her subjects and provides her with a peel-away negative that can be used in an enlarger. The prints at Iris, with a few 8-by-10-inch exceptions, are 20-by-24 inches. These archival silver gelatin prints retain the ragged, interestingly patterned edges of the negative, forming an immediate frame for the work within the slim shafts of the actual frame. Several times she joins two prints to form a diptych.
On view at Iris BookCafe, 1331 Main St., Over-the-Rhine, through July 24, with a possible extension. More info: irisbookcafe.com.
