The Louisville Times – Thursday, November, 6, 1980 – C-11
Review
Photos evoke rich visual song
By Claude H. Cookman
Times Picture EditorThroughout the photos the alternating bands of light and shadow swell and contract, bend and flow, vibrate and recede in a rich visual melody.
The delicate striations gently explore the topography of the human body, define the textures in a bowl of eggs, reveal the graceful curve of an old porcelain bathtub.In her show, “Sun-Divided,” Lexington photographer Julie E. Brent develops a strongly coherent theme on the interplay of light and shadow, but she manages also to keep the photos remarkably varied. The 33 works hang at Marnie’s Ltd. Gallery, 605 W. Main St., through Nov. 28.
An early photo titled “The Source,” pictures a venetian blind from a low angle that shows the slats in silhouette, growing increasingly narrower as the strips of intervening light grow correspondingly wider.
The photo, of course, offers a clue about how most of the other pictures were achieved. Strong sunlight streaming though the blind projects patterns onto subjects which are significant only in the way they interrupt and modify those patterns.
Beneath the obvious striped surface effects, the photographer achieves some subtleties that reveal a rational humor. For example, as the bands of light and shadow ripple over the musculature of a man’s back, they break in a way that matches white edges against black and black against white.
This photo, “Jim’s Bath I,” and a few similar ones recall Op Art. If you focus your eyes tightly on the prints, deliberately shutting out your peripheral vision, the bands set up the same retinal reverberations that characterized the 1960’s art movement.
Other photos retain the striped pattern, but subordinate it to concerns with form and tonality. For example, in :”Ovoid Division II,” my favorite in the show, a white bowl and three eggs create a luminescence that contrasts with the deep black mass dominating the lower half of the picture.
The quality of this print and others suggest Ms. Brent was working with large format negatives, but she says she used a normal black and white film with standard development. The rich textures in the prints result, instead, from the quality of light and the lustrous surfaces of the subjects.
For all its obvious successes, the show has some minor problems. The works are hung in a way that propels the viewer, on entering the gallery, to the conclusion of the show instead of its beginning.
Also, several works in monochrome watercolor and a wood-and-fabric construction are included to show how the photographer explored the same themes in other media. While this is an interesting attempt, the caliber of these works cannot match the photographs.
A native of Trimble County, Ms Brent has worked as a graphic artist for 10 years. She is now pursuing a masters degree in Art Education at the University of Kentucky.
The perception and variety that infuses Ms. Brent’s work holds promise for future photographic delights.
Sun-Divided Photographs were also exhibited in Kiev, Ukraine in Soviart 1988
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