Moody photos disdain modern digital effects

Digital technology makes it easy to manipulate photographs to produce any effect desired. But some photographers are returning to large-format cameras, glass-plate negatives and darkroom procedures that would have been familiar to 19th- or early 20th-century masters such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn and others.

Cleveland photographer Herbert Ascherman Jr. has assembled an exhibition of photographs by himself and others in the region who use archaic methods in pursuit of rich effects beyond the reach of digital wizardry. The show, on view at Heights Arts Gallery in Cleveland Heights, includes 76 images by eight photographers from Northeast Ohio, two of whom, Ryan Durdella and Richard Wolf, work as assistants for Ascherman.

The photographers constitute an affinity group connected by a shared aesthetic, and their work achieves effects which, at best, are wonderful and strangely anachronistic.

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Some images, such as Ascherman's luminous portrait of "Abby," a young woman, could have been taken 100 years ago. The sepia-toned photograph is focused in a shallow manner, so that only the nearest portions of the girl's face are in focus. Everything else is artfully blurred, bringing to mind the hazily atmospheric style of the Pictorialist photography popular at the turn of the 20th century. Abby's pale eyes, entranced expression and long, wavy hair produce a mesmerizing effect. The photograph is stunning and somehow part of the present but strangely out of time, as if the subject were a contemporary of Robert Louis Stevenson or Virginia Woolf.

Other images by Ascherman employ the same atmospheric effects, while focusing on subjects that look distinctly un-Victorian or Edwardian. These include an image of a beautiful nude woman with a tattoo on her right thigh, who covers strategic areas with the body of her infant blond daughter. Another Ascherman portrait focuses on a buxom black woman who sports a black leather corset bristling with shiny buckles.

Ascherman relishes the subtle effects possible in the platinum-palladium process, which involves printing a negative on paper sensitized with a metallic compound that soaks into the surface, producing an image integral with the paper itself. But he also loves grabbing attention with stunts that are borderline risque yet somehow always held in check. His entertaining style establishes him as ringleader and pooh-bah of the local neo-Pictorialists while also suggesting he ought to give free rein to his inner Robert Mapplethorpe. The results could be provocative and memorable.

Images by Durdella and Wolf employ the same aesthetic as Ascherman's, though with less impact. Durdella's close-ups of lily pads, garden foliage and a foaming wave on a beach are sweet and tasteful, but without a strong sense of artistic identity. The same is true of Wolf's landscapes and still lifes.

Jeannette Palsa's ambrotypes, made on glass plates backed by black paper, employ old-timey techniques not just to produce exotic effects but to raise questions about how the restrictive methods can hone and focus an artist's vision. Palsa's dark-toned close-up of a girl's face, entitled "Libby," and a separate portrait, entitled "Emme," in which a perspective diagram is imposed on a woman's face, are mysterious and exquisite. Alas, they are horribly displayed on a wall that parallels the gallery's storefront window, which drowns their subtleties in reflected light. Palsa, an artist with a strong sense of purpose, deserves better.

Jerald Brodkey, a retired neurosurgeon, is represented by a series of sharp-focused platinum-palladium prints of beach scenes, woods and a flowering fruit tree. The images evoke comfort and plenty, but, as is true of work by other photographers, Brodkey's work lacks urgency and distinctiveness. The same applies to Roy Woda's images of the Cleveland skyline or black men sitting in a barbershop.

In contrast, Robert Puckett's contortionist images of nude and seminude women have a contrived artiness, as do Bob Herbst's stagily posed portraits. Here, however, both photographers have clear, visual goals. Their work could not be mistaken for that of each other, or anyone else in the show. That places them in the middle echelon at Heights Arts.

Palsa and Ascherman come out on top. More than exercises in nostalgia or artifice, their work justifies the use of archaic techniques because it attains the hypnotic power to hold and reward attention. That's one of the chief aims of art.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

slitt@plaind.com, 216-999-4136