Family Fun / Arts & Leisure

Figge exhibit examines photos

By David Burke | Saturday, October 11, 2008 | () comments

Photoshop has spoiled us.

With just a click of the mouse, 21st-century photographers can change and manipulate images on a computer screen to fit their needs.

But it wasn’t always like this, as a new exhibit at the Figge Art Museum in downtown Davenport shows.

“In the Light” features six photographers’ work with images that were altered either by scientific means or by changes made in the darkroom.

“This adds some historical background to a technique we take for granted these days,” said Rima Girnius, the new assistant curator at the Figge, who organized the exhibit.

The works in the exhibit, which opened recently and continues through early January, are 36 pieces in a collection of 84 donated by Brent Sikkema, a Morrison, Ill., native and New York gallery owner.

Pieces in the collection were among the first to show that photographs do not always give a truthful picture of life.

“Photography is not just a mere snapshot of reality,” Girnius said. “People have always argued that photography is a way we’ve perceived the world and the pictorial space.”

The works by Barbara Morgan, Carlotta Corpron, Eliot Porter, Gyogory Kepes, Harold Edgerton and Olivia Parker also show that it doesn’t always have to be photographers who take photos. Some were scientists using the pictures to study light or movement.

“They were the product of a marriage between science and art,” Girnius said.

Edgerton’s work with high-speed cameras was used to try to capture exact moments in nature. One photo in the exhibit shows a singular drop of milk falling into a pool of water.

He had tried to perfect the “cornet pattern” for 25 years, Girnius said.

“He never felt like he managed to achieve the ‘perfect drop,’ ” she said. “It was a theme he’d return to again and again.”

Edgerton also produced some iconic photos, including a bullet shooting through an apple and a bullet piercing a jack of diamonds playing card.

Porter’s environmental photographs include some of the first color pictures taken, in 1953 and 1957.

“Nowadays, with any kind of digital camera, you can take pictures, but people didn’t take color pictures” back then, Girnius said.

Presenting the new acquisitions to the museum in an orderly fashion was a challenge for Girnius, a Lithuanian native who lived in Germany for 10 years before getting degrees from Notre Dame University and Bryn Mawr College.

It also adds photography to the collection at the Figge, something that she and curator Michelle Robinson have said is long overdue.

“People didn’t believe photography was an art form for the longest time,” Girnius said. “This has been something that has, in the arts, always been a matter of discussion.”

The exhibit also is allowing the Figge to expand its educational offerings with the opening of Studio 1, a hands-on center taking up one of the museum’s studio spaces. Children and adults can work on projects related to an exhibit elsewhere in the building. “Picture This!” which opened Saturday, teaches children about pre-computer photography, including a miniature darkroom and the photo techniques of framing, composition, texture, light and color.

“We want to introduce photography at a very basic level and teach them how they can look at art in a simple way that anyone can do,” Figge education director Ann Marie Hayes said.

Ideally, families will stop at Studio 1 before or after viewing the photography exhibit.

“You have an experience here, have an experience in the gallery and keep learning,” Hayes added.

David Burke can be contacted at (563) 383-2400 or dburke@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.

IF YOU GO

What: “In the Light”

When: Through Jan 4; museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays, until 9 p.m. Thursdays

Where: Figge Art Museum, 225 W. 2nd St., Davenport

How much: $7 for adults, $6 for senior citizens and students, $4 for children younger than 12 years

Information: (563) 326-7804 or FiggeArtMuseum.org on the Web