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Apr. 21--For a tantalizing peek into the future of photography, visit the Aperture Foundation, where 50 young photographers are in full swagger. The mini-survey looks to them as guideposts for imagining what photography might look like 30 years from now. Considering the diverse backgrounds of the participants, the show allows us to form a remarkably coherent picture of the 21st century. These up-and-comers are clearly less interested in capturing reality than in reinventing it in bold, splashy color.
The show originated at the Musee de l'Elysee in Lausanne, Switzerland, where the curators sifted through hundreds of candidates from the world's top photography schools. There's no doubt about the talent of those they picked, and the show is as consistent in quality as it is in content.
So what are young photographers up to? First of all, they've roundly rejected the traditional subject matter: There are no nudes, no street photographs, no decisive moments, no awe-inspiring landscapes. Spontaneity is anathema to these artists, who carefully isolate the components of their world for intense study. When it comes to people, they're not content simply to record faces; they want to analyze dreams.
Oren Noy of Israel is spellbound by the paraphernalia of domestic life. His lens catches all the glints of a typical kitchen: the flashes of light reflected by a dish rack stacked with glass, a sparkling countertop, a clean tile backsplash. Another of his pictures zeroes in on a lace curtain with manic precision. An ordinary fixture of the home becomes, through his eyes, a sculpture of monumental proportions and comparable dignity.
American Caroline Shepard also takes a metaphoric microscope to domestic life, photographing her subjects in homes packed with expressive detail and painterly light. A very pregnant "Jean" sprawls on a colossal couch beneath a panoramic window. The walls are turquoise, the couch burgundy, the trees a vivid green. Shepard works with digital technology, manipulating her pictures for maximal theatricality.
It's a truism that photography freezes time, but all of the pictures here have an exaggerated stasis, and an almost hieratic formality. Where Cartier-Bresson eternally pursued the "decisive moment," these photographers have banished the moment entirely. They create worlds suspended in time.
Japanese photographer Shigeru Takato takes pictures of television news studios all over the world. Empty of people and devoid of the lights, sound and music that enliven them on the tube, these studios in Cologne, Zurich and Auckland look ridiculously, forlornly futuristic, trapped in some science-fiction fantasy we should long ago have outgrown.
In a similar vein, Raphael Dallaporta of France photographs individual land mines for his series "Antipersonnel." Dallaporta recognizes the formal beauty of these weapons and poses them as Edward Weston positioned his peppers, toadstools and eggplants - to show off their sensual lines. But Dallaporta accompanies each image with a caption detailing its deadly power. His land mines are like femmes fatales, beautiful and deadly.
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Copyright (c) 2006, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.
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