Academia Nut?

Went to Lenoir-Rhyne University today to see a photo exhibition. It was in the Visual Arts Center (VAC) which is listed as being on 8th Avenue NE, but really isn’t there at all. There are no signs on 8th Avenue to show its presence, and none of the five people (students?) I asked on 8th Avenue knew where it was. It was supposed to be at 643 and 1/2 on the avenue and there was 653 and the building next to it was 633 and nothing in between except a maintenance shop which was well back off the street. Turns out the VAC is behind the maintenance shop. Once there I found five parking spaces. They were all taken, of course.

Well, once in the VAC, which seems to be basically a converted construction shed, there were about 60 or 65 photographs displayed on walls. The pictures were black-matted on white paper and covered with cellophane-type material. Many of them appeared to be about 6X8 or 8X10 inches. A few were a little larger.

Two of the pictures were nice and two others were interesting. There was a lot of trouble with darkness in the pictures and only one or two were completely in focus. That’s not a big problem for me, but I do try to keep the out-of-focus parts in the background and not the subject as was often the case here. Colors seemed kind of jarring with lots of improvisation and not much harmony, saturation was completely missing. Tones were not usually organized and a lot of the photos were hung up in the two, three, four zonal range. There was no composition or even use of design elements, no stories were told. The only emotions emerging from the display were faint whiffs of puzzlement. Snacks were offered and “Barefoot” wine was available. The wine accompanied the photographs very well and the munchies were eleganté.

Well, I haven’t mentioned the photographer’s name and I won’t. The whole thing seemed so bizarre, especially with all these obviously well-educated people standing there, peering intently at the photographs, thoughtfully munching their goodies and knowingly sipping their wine, I felt like I had gone terribly wrong and missed the entire message. So I walked outside and came back in again. That didn’t help.

Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves in a vacuous kind of way. I felt left out. Some of them actually seemed to be floating there in front of the photos. I guess it is just an academia thing.

There IS such a thing as photographic art. And one of the things any artist learns early in that game is to show ONLY your very best work.