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'PAIRED,' IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM and RONDAL PARTRIDGE, with HORACE BRISTOL
When: Through Nov. 25
Where: East/West Gallery, 714 Bond Ave.
Gallery hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday by appointment
Information: 963-4041, www.eastwestgallery.com
The new photography show at East/West Gallery -- "Paired," works by
Imogen Cunningham and Rondal Partridge, with Horace Bristol -- makes
viewers compare and contrast the seductive and cool elegance of
Cunningham's pioneering photography and the impressive if scattered
efforts of her son, Partridge, who lives in Berkeley and is still an
active shooter at 90.
In the final analysis, though, the eye is drawn to, and the is mind
piqued by, the images by the great Cunningham (1883-1976). The rest of
the story seems peripheral. Such is the focusing nature of great art, in
which a forest of stimuli is pared down to specific, cherished trees.
And such is the power of the few Cunningham pieces here. Of keen
interest is the lovely, unusual 1968 nude study "Phoenix Recumbent," in
which a reclining woman's tumbling hair is a sharply focused thicket
juxtaposed with creamy, dreamy skin, fading out of focus in the
background.
Next to that image on the same wall are the unexpectedly ravishing
"Unmade Bed" (1958) and the close-up "Magnolia Blossom." Both project
visual language similar to the nude, with a heightened sensitivity to
contours, light and mood, as well as a formal poise.
Also in the show is work by Bristol, the famed late photographer whose
eye turned photojournalism and reportage into the stuff of art. Bristol
lived in Ojai in his later years, and his son Henri runs the East/West
Gallery.
Bristol's photography, including the classic Depression-era imagery that
helped inspire "The Grapes of Wrath," is familiar in these parts. In
this context, though, we sense the resonant link to the work of
Cunningham, whom he described as a mentor and friend. Clearly, the
influence of formal artists such as Cunningham and other early Western
photographers in the so-called "f.64" group informed Bristol's approach
to image-making.
As photographers go, Partridge is of a different variety than his
mother. A restless and slyly funny artist, he experiments with form and
medium. His "Nude Cube" is a prize conceptual curio in the show. In this
interlocking arrangement of photo cubes -- a kind of Rubik's Cube
photo-sculpture puzzle -- a kaleidoscopic entanglement of limbs and body
parts takes a mischievous route to the nude tradition mastered by his
mother.
Partridge's proximity to some of the 20th century's photography icons
seeped into his pictures, including in his famous portrait of Ansel
Adams. But Partridge has his own, more playful way with the medium, as
with the image he calls "Pave It and Paint It Green." Here, the vision
of Yosemite so beloved by Adams is seen as a contrast between the
majesty of Half Dome and the mundanity of a dense crush of parked cars
in the valley.
Even Partridge's self-portrait is a quirky thing, a portrait of the
artist with camera, as if seen in a fun-house mirror. A book on
Partridge goes by the title "Quizzical Eye." As evidenced in this show,
the son is fueled by a quizzical eye, whereas the mother's eye was more
of the radiant, quietly probing sort.
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