The show consists of the work of nine photographers. In the case of Cynthia Greig’s work and Pamela Ellis Hawkes’s, it’s reading that’s believing. Without explanatory texts, you’d swear Greig’s “Representation’’ series are drawings and Hawkes’s “Surrogate Reality’’ series are etchings. Greig takes everyday objects (books, stacked cups), paints them white, outlines them in charcoal, photographs them on color film, and prints the results. Hawkes arranges drawings or prints with three-dimensional objects on a table against a dark background. The pictures have a visual lushness that contrasts with the parched, Minimalist look of Greig’s work.
John Chervinsky uses dark backgrounds, too, for his quite-marvelous “Experiments in Perspective’’ series. These works are like mathematical equations made manifest, jokes that have theorems for punch lines. Placing a pair of blackboards at right angles to each other, he uses chalk lines and various common objects (a clock, a glass and pitcher, a light bulb) to create Euclidean still lifes that are at once elegant, austere, and playful.
Chervinsky wants us to see abstract reasoning. Jim Dow wants to alert us to the vagaries of space. He captures a Fenway Park that’s deserted and defiantly horizontal. The latter condition is much more striking than the absence of fans or players. After all, don’t we usually think of Fenway in vertical terms: light towers, the arc of a home run, the Green Monster’s height? Flatness is the defining characteristic of “Sign’’ and “Political Poster of Evita Peron, Buenos Aires.’’ Combining delicate, faded colors with the absence of depth, they could be Pompeian wall paintings. Conversely, “World’s Largest Holstein Cow, Near Salem, ND’’ (fiberglass, not flesh and blood) and “Red Apple Café, US 59 and 200, Mahomen, MN’’ are all about depth.
