April 2010
"Night Lights" @ DNJ Gallery
March 15, 2010 – May 1, 2010
By Diane Calder
Three perceptive photographers turn their faces away from the garish light of day to evoke the magic mystery of the night. Bill Sosin employs depth of field like a jazz musician whose mastery of basics allows his music to soar. He focuses on raindrops pelting his car’s windshield, layering these beautifully articulated, sparkling gems over backgrounds of colorful soft focus splashes of light emanating from movie marquees, traffic signals and other barely identifiable sources. In contrast, Helen K. Garber purposefully keeps elements in her black and white archival digital diptychs in focus, encouraging careful analysis of details in her witty study of similarities and disparities between famed Venice, Italy and the product of Abbot Kinney’s dreams, Venice, CA. Garber utilizes piazzas, canals, arches, and even a boat named “Fantasy” in her engaging, poetic series. Elements in a stark local church are positioned to echo those of a chapel in Italy, but Garber includes a car in the shot, precluding any possibility of confusion. The suggestion of danger lurking in Garber’s photos of narrow passageways is amplified in Ginny Mangrum’s depictions of light emanating from interiors of locations that are normally closed up at night. Mangrum enhances the voyeuristic quality of her work in “Shop,” which includes two headless mannequins. (DNJ Gallery, Miracle Mile)
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