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Rich Rollins edits the ordinary in his inventive and understated black-and-white representations. Robert Lyons seeks out subjects that fascinate him and photographs them in vibrant, seductive color. These two photographers currently have solo exhibitions in Portland galleries. Both men are white, educated, mid-career artists who reside in the Pacific Northwest and use a camera as their primary tool for art making. But this is where the similarities end. Their approaches to recording their experiences in the world are radically different, which suggests that their intentions as artists are different, as well. Rollins' subjects include the uneven edge of a concrete road; the legs, feet and shadow of a woman walking across the street; a white line on brick wall; a bird on a telephone wire; waves in water. The 22 images in his current exhibition are all untitled, and all but one are the intimate size of 5 inches by 5 inches. This artist abstracts mundane scenes just enough to make them speak of more than themselves. He photographs with a Diana camera, which has an inexpensive, plastic lens that does not provide an even focus across the picture plane. Consequently, the photographs are sharp and resolved in the center and dark and blurred at their edges: The representation is reminiscent of a memory drifting out of focus. It's not clear where these images were taken, and Rollins seems as satisfied photographing in and around his Portland home as he does in places less familiar to him. He is, in his words, "by nature an observer" for whom seeing is a creative act. "I love to look, to be in the world wandering," he says By contrast, Robert Lyons, who received his MFA from Yale University, photographs in vibrant, seductive color, which he says "permits the suspension of disbelief." He travels from his home base of Seattle to places that North Americans find exotic and photographs the landscapes and the people who live there. The exhibited prints are of Africa, and most of them are 20 inches by 24 inches, large enough to seem cinematic. Commercial Artists Studio, for example, is a photograph of the front of an artist's studio and shop in Ghana. To the right of the open door, painted in bright colors on the facade, is an image of Sean Connery wearing a tuxedo and holding a gun. The facial features are inaccurate, but the actor's name is unevenly printed beneath his portrait, so there is no mistake about his identity. "For Your Eyes Only" is printed above in bamboo-like script, like that found on prepackaged Chinese food. Fante Woman, photographed in Ghana, portrays a dark-skinned young woman from the waist up. She wears a paisley dress and is seated sideways at a window, looking over her shoulder through a light gauze curtain at the viewer. Food Stall, Stonetown, Zanzibar Island, Tanzania renders a lidded, glass bowl etched with grapes and peaches. It rests on a wooden chair that props open a thick door carved in a grid pattern. These subjects represent "the other" and seem to fascinate Lyons. British colonial travel photographers set a precedent for the recording of such scenes in the mid-19th century. Francis Frith traveled to the Middle East three times between 1856 and 1859 and created several portfolios of images that found a healthy market with his fellow Victorian Englishmen. His second trip was sponsored by the publisher Negretti and Zambra, who subsequently published Egypt and Palestine Photographed and Described by Francis Frith. Lyons' intentions appear to be similar to Frith's in that he's photographing foreign lands with an eye for the beauty and "exoticism" that appeals to the population in his homeland. Both Rollins and Lyons convey their interpretation of the world with photographs. Rollins makes poetry of the mundane; Lyons captures subjects and scenes that seem extraordinary to Anglos. Rollins' work is not location-specific; Lyons conveys the qualities of a particular place from his point of view--his bodies of work are usually formed around a country or continent. Rollins is a true observer; Lyons is a collector of images reflecting the extensiveness of his travels. If "ordinary" is what 20th-century North American urban dwellers experience on a daily basis, then the crux of Rollins' art is a passionate portrayal of the transcendent in the ordinary. Conversely, the basis of Lyons' art is physically escaping the ordinary and photographing what he finds once he gets out. |
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