In the abstract

With mundane materials, mirrors, and light, photographer makes magic

April 03, 2009|Sebastian Smee, Globe Staff

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Quinlan's procedures have more in common with the mysterious, almost alchemical spirit of experiment that distinguished photography's infancy in the 19th century than with the style of spectacular, manipulated, conceptually overwrought photography favored today.

Mind you, she is not alone among contemporary photographers in preferring the mysteries inherent in old techniques to digital manipulations: One thinks of Adam Fuss, Abelardo Morell, and Sally Mann, among many others. She makes herself a rarer bird by choosing to explore photography's capacity for abstraction.

Her success makes me wonder if abstraction might not be on the verge of a comeback. It's interesting in this sense to think about how much Quinlan's work shares with that of Tomma Abts, the abstract painter who surprised everyone by winning Britain's Turner Prize in 2006. Like Quinlan, except in the medium of paint, Abts makes great play with color, close cropping, trompe l'oeil, mirror illusions, and other optical tomfoolery, all of it balanced with somber dexterity.

Keep an eye on Quinlan. Her means and methods are modest. But she extracts from them an unusual amount of aesthetic juice.

Sebastian Smee can be reached at ssmee@globe.com.