It sounds like an all-too-predictable project for a beginning photography class: Go and shoot some scenes of a local apple orchard. Yawn.
But in the hands of Andrea Modica, a nationally known photographer who teaches at Drexel University in Philadelphia, such potentially banal subject matter is transformed into evocative imagery infused with meaning and feeling.
Two dozen such black-and- white works from a series titled “Northeast Kingdom” are on view through Jan. 5 at the Sandy Carson Gallery. It is, in its quiet, nuanced way, one of the region’s most beautiful photography exhibitions of the year.
The former Colorado Springs resident gained much of her fame from an unforgettable series of sometimes disturbing yet achingly touching photos of a rural Treadwell, N.Y., family, especially a pudgy, awkwardly photogenic girl named Barbara, who died of complications from diabetes in 2001 at age 22.
Working in an unusual kind of semi-staged collaboration with Barbara and her other subjects, Modica has created enigmatic narratives that are in a certain way contrived yet still possess an unmistakable sense of emotional authenticity and truth.
Moving her camera to the very different world of a Vermont apple orchard (she taught briefly at the University of Vermont), the photographer could no longer partner in the same way with her subjects. But a narrative sense nonetheless pervades these images, and she somehow even manages to imbue individual apples with a sense of personality.
Indeed, she creates what might best be described as portraits, in which she focuses on the particular traits of a lone apple. Good examples include No.11 (the pieces do not have individual titles), a rotting yet still plump apple with a handsomely mottled surface hanging defiantly on a thin, leafless branch.
In this amazing series, she has created a visual poem of surprising complexity and depth. At work in this simple and largely ordinary place, she succeeds in subtly confronting such unexpectedly weighty themes as life, death and the intervention of humanity in nature.
Showing the full life cycle, Modica captures the apple orchard across the seasons, from trees in resplendent blossom in images such as No.24 (with its inevitable echoes of Asian paintings) to No.19. In this jarring scene, apples are strewn across a dirt road, with tire tracks offering the only direct evidence of human presence.
Because most of the images depict the orchard in the fall or perhaps winter (though there is never any snow), a melancholic, sometimes forlorn feeling hangs over this show in a way that seems not off-putting or dour but simply truthful and inevitable.
The sense of enigma that pervades Modica’s figurative images can be found in this series as well. There is never a panoramic view of the orchard, as would be expected with a documentary approach. Instead, she offers a few midrange shots of groups of trees but mostly gives viewers only fragments and snatches of this mysterious world.
And even in these restricted images, nothing is ever shown clearly or directly. Instead portions fluctuate in and out of focus, with some areas deliberately overexposed, others underexposed. A typical example is No.21, with its deliberately blurred look at a clump of trees and a blackened, semi-circle across the top, as though viewers are looking at the scene through a telescope.
She seems to want to keep the viewer at arm’s length, to suggest the reality but never fully acknowledge it. She leaves room for viewer’s imagination to fill in the details and complete the story, and, in that way, there is understated romanticism that is an unmistakable part of these photographs.
As she has done so masterfully in her figurative works, Modica has brought her distinctive point of view to a humble apple orchard and created images of rare originality and substance.
This is a not-to-miss exhibition for photography connoisseurs, nature lovers and anyone who simply appreciates scenes of contemplative beauty.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
“Northeast Kingdom”
PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION| Two dozen views of a Vermont apple orchard by former Coloradan Andrea Modica|Sandy Carson Gallery, 760 Santa Fe Drive| Free| 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and and noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays; through Jan. 5; 303-573-8585 or sandycarsongallery.com.
1more
“The Nitto Files” A good idea girds this oddly named exhibition, sponsored by the Invisible Museum, an organization devoted to promoting the visual arts in Denver.
Why not ask a group of 14 area artists to create works that in some way depict or respond to the Denver Art Museum’s jutting addition, which opened in October?
To make it even more interesting, why not have them incorporate recycled sections of “Nitto,” the protective sheeting that covered the building’s titanium exterior during construction?
The result is a small, fascinating offering of primarily photographs – some semi-abstract and deconstructed, others more direct.
There are also two original prints, including Mark Lunning’s view of the building through the legs of the horse that is part of a public sculpture outside the Denver Central Library, and a whimsical drawing by Bill Amundsen.
The free exhibit concludes this weekend at 910 Arts, 910 Santa Fe Drive. Hours are noon to 5 p.m. today and Saturday. 303-832-2413 or invisiblemuseum.org.
–Kyle MacMillan
