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On the verge of a new millennium, contemporary photography is enjoying a remarkably
fertile period. In the aftermath of post modernism, the formidable driving force behind much of the work produced
in the 1980s, there does not appear to be one dominant direction in photography. As a result of ground-breaking
strategies that defined post modernism, such as the appropriation of images from popular culture, the pseudo-documentation
of constructed realities, and gender-based art, photographers today are able to take advantage of a broader field
of creative choices. The previous decade also witnessed the mercurial rise of photography and a consolidation of
its acceptance by the art world--a phenomenon fueled, in part, by the increased scale of photographs and their
recognition by museums and galleries. Photographers today are returning to a concern with technical processes (particularly
earlier ones), an interest in abstraction, and a more personal kind of expression than that practiced during the
post modern period. The increased experimentation with processes such as the photogram, signals a return to a more
elemental way of working that is as much about personal vision as it is a response to our visual culture.
Although photograms are often the first kinds of photographs artists and amateurs alike
produce, few have used the technique as consistently and exclusively as Anita Douthat. For nearly twenty years,
Douthat has been making photograms--images produced without a camera using objects that are placed directly onto
light-sensitive paper and exposed to light. She is drawn to the process for its essential simplicity, its directness
of means and its potential for limitless formal invention. As an undergraduate at the Institute of Design at the
Illinois Institute of Technology, Douthat investigated scientific photography. At the same time, she began taking
straight pictures on the streets of Chicago, both as a way of learning her craft and learning about the city. Later,
in the graduate program at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, Douthat stopped photographing her environs,
principally because of her unfamiliarity with this southwestern locale. While she was fascinated by the diverse
cultures surrounding her, she was sensitive to the idea that her street photography was perhaps too intrusive,
and she retreated into a more private mode of expression. At the same time, Douthat was taking courses in the history
of photography, which ultimately influenced the direction her work would take.
The photogram appears with some frequency throughout the history of
photography, and indeed, some of the first photograms, although fugitive
images, occurred as early as 1800, decades before the official announcement
of the invention of photography in 1839. By 1834, the British scientist
William Henry Fox Talbot had succeeded in fixing
his photogenic drawings, as his early photograms were known. For Douthat,
Talbot summarized why this first and most basic of photographic processes
continues to appeal to contemporary artists:
The most transitory of things, a shadow, the proverbial
emblem of all that
is fleeting and momentary, may be fettered by the spells
of our natural
magic, and may be fixed forever in the position which it
seemed only destined
for a single instant to occupy.1
In the late teens and early 1920s, the surrealist Man
Ray and his European contemporary Laszlo Moholy-Nagy,
rediscovered the photogram for its abstract and literal vocabulary,
as a way of describing the chance intersection of seemingly unrelated
events, and for its ability to evoke emotional responses. Similarly,
Douthat uses shapes for their evocative and layered associations. She
often employs recognizable, utilitarian objects that suggest human activity,
without including the body itself. For example, in My Father's Stools
(an homage to her father), Douthat imprints the stools designed and
made by her father. The serial piece, Speedaway, carries multiple
visual and cultural references, recalling the early motion studies of
Eadweard Muybridge, Orson Welles' celebrated Rosebud, and even the legendary
sled installation, The Pack, by Joseph Beuys from 1969.
When objects are too large to be accommodated by the printing-out paper, Douthat uses miniature versions, such
as model ships and toys, as in the four-part piece titled Armada. Within the limited range of colors that
the gold-toning (added for permanence) yields, Douthat controls the color of the print according to the subject
matter. She selectively manipulates the toning process's characteristic hues that range between warm purple and
red, and a cooler silver or grey.
A perennial interest in anatomical imagery and an invitation in 1994 from Joel Otterson and Jonathan Christie,
led Douthat to create her anatomical series, Bone Scans. In Bone Scans: Body Double, an oversized
diptych, Douthat approximates the human skeleton, albeit in a decidedly not anatomically correct fashion. Another
of her most important precedents for this series was the production of The Beat: For Eddie (dedicated to
her mother), which is composed of anatomical diagrams. Douthat further investigates the human form in the mysterious
and humorous Double Dummy series, whose title derives from the game of bridge. Pyro Girl is a multiple exposure
of assembled materials ranging from newspaper engraving plates of women's fashions, to anatomical diagrams, and
engravings of fireworks (unrecognizable except for the reference to "Pyrotechny," which appears as "Pyro"
in the finished print). Douthat also cites as influences the ocess-oriented and conceptually-based work of
photographers who rose to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as Frederick Sommer, Betty Hahn,
Thomas Barrow and Robert Heinecken. These artists, among others, radically expanded the artistic vocabulary of
photography to include references to or direct appropriations from the imagery of popular culture. Sommer often
incorporated old engravings in his photographs and Barrow and Heinecken printed through entire magazine or newspaper
pages in their photograms.
Whether by working with objects directly, or by reference to them, Douthat contrasts permanent fixtures in the
world with the shadows they cast. In her work, she presents the paradox of the immediacy of the thing itself with
its absence, the fleeting with the permanent, and the narrative with the ephemeral. In this physically demanding,
most low-tech process, working with elements at hand--sunlight, paper, objects and time--Douthat transports us
to a dream-like world, full of familiar yet intangible images.
Catherine Evans Curator of Photography
Columbus Museum of Art
Notes
1. W.H.F. Talbot, "Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing," London: R. & J.E. Taylor, 1839
(reprinted).
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