Buildings and Light

Michener Art Museum colleagues Bruce Katsiff and Brian Peterson get an exhibit of their own at the Riverrun Gallery.

By: Susan Van Dongen

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"Rock Forms" Series 24 by Brian Peterson.


   For photographers Bruce Katsiff and Brian Peterson, having an exhibit of their own work is kind of like getting to be the bride after years of bridesmaid duty.
   Both men work behind the scenes for the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pa. Mr. Katsiff, a Lumberville, Pa., resident, is the museum’s director and Mr. Peterson, of Lower Gwynedd, Pa., is senior curator, as well as editor of several publications co-released by the museum and the University of Pennsylvania.
   "When you have all these responsibilities, to keep creating, you have to be a bit of a maniac about your own art," Mr. Peterson says. "I’ve been crazy enough to continue being an artist in the face of doing everything else. You have to be very focused and disciplined about (making pictures), but I have found ways to do it."

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"Henry’s Ladder" by Bruce Katsiff.


   Mr. Katsiff and Mr. Peterson have combed their personal archives, selecting their favorite black-and-white works from the last 25 years to present the joint exhibit, Two Photographers, at the Riverrun Gallery in Lambertville April 16 to May 29.
   Mr. Katsiff’s "Built Environments" captures man-made structures that range from decaying ruins to modern skyscrapers. He’s made large format images in diverse locations — practically outside his office window in Doylestown as well as France, Spain and China.

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"from…to," Series 2 by Mr. Peterson.


   Mr. Peterson, whose half of the exhibit is simply titled "Selected Photographs, 1979-2004," presents more than 20 prints chosen from seven different bodies of work produced over this period. While the images vary in subject matter and style, all explore the recurring themes of light and movement — a hallmark of Mr. Peterson’s work since he first took his camera out to Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park in the late 1970s.
   "It all started in Fairmount," he says, remarking that he had come to Philadelphia to study composition and piano performance at the University of Pennsylvania — an art form he had to abandon due to tendonitis.

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"Water Music" Series 1, by Mr. Peterson.


   For nature lovers worn down by Philadelphia’s overabundance of concrete and asphalt, the northwestern part of Fairmount Park is especially delightful. Winding along the Wissahickon Creek, you can get way, way back in the woods, where the only sounds are rushing water, birds and the occasional passerby. Mr. Peterson says at times, he forgot he was still in the city. As someone who grew up in the big-sky country of the Western United States, the greenery and solitude of Fairmount Park fed Mr. Peterson’s soul but also sparked his interest in photography.
   "For a few years, it sustained me photographically," he says.
   The series "Trees, Stones, Water and Light" — images that go back to the late ’70s and early ’80s — give a hint of Mr. Peterson’s love affair with Fairmount.
   Keyholes of sun poke through a canopy of hardwood trees, lighting a patch of greenery or casting shadows. Ten years later, with the "Forest Light" series, Mr. Peterson focused on individual fronds, using light and movement to create shapely abstractions. Having studied with John Weiss at the University of Delaware — himself a student of Minor White — Mr. Peterson recognized more and more of an ephemeral, meditative quality in his own photography.
   "I would say that Minor White is an influence not so much in terms of subject matter," Mr. Peterson says. "It’s more of a mindset. His work has a sense of poetry to it.
   "I do feel he is one of my spiritual ancestors," he continues. "A photograph can be a literal representation of something in the world but it can also have a poetic text. It can produce and excite the imagination and touch on areas of human experience that the literal recording of reality can’t. Minor White was the great master of that way of thinking."
   Another photographic hero is Edward Weston. Just as Weston had his sensual pepper portraits, Mr. Peterson pays homage to an unnamed vegetable in Life Form Series #16. It looks like patterns in fabric, coral or maybe a medical portrait of the brain. We won’t reveal its mystery, but the photographer had to visit the produce aisle to create the image.
   "I would go to the grocery store and spend more time than one probably should looking at lettuce and peppers and cabbage," Mr. Peterson says with a chuckle. "The clerks were eyeing me like I was some kind of a pervert. My intention with this piece was to hopefully take people someplace other than a literal reality. As with Weston’s green pepper pictures, I hope people can appreciate the underlying forms of nature we miss because we’re so used to them. I don’t want to intrude on Edward Weston’s territory, but I thought I would take this series of images in the same direction he did. But I’m certainly not Edward Weston. For one thing, I’m much nicer to my wife."
   Although many of the images were realized with a manual camera, the prints are digital. Mr. Peterson says this is the first time he’s employed all-digital printing technology for a show.
   "I’ve been scanning and digitally re-printing some of the older bodies of work," he says. "The quality is much better than I could get in the darkroom. And that’s not to put the darkroom down. I’ve been printing for 35 years and I have fixer in my blood — there’s a magic to it. But with some of the older negatives, I would try and try to print them in the darkroom and never got prints I was happy with. Now you can get such incredible detail and control over various aspects of the pictures."
   Mr. Katsiff agrees about the excellent quality of digital prints, especially in combination with large- and medium-format negatives.
   "I work with a view camera, so I’ll scan in those 8-by-10 or 5-by-7 (inch) negatives and then work with Photoshop to do whatever I need to do, which gives me control over color and contrast," he says. "I have a passion to include as much detail and information in the picture as possible and the big negatives give you terrific detail. It’s a nice marriage of 19th and 21st century technologies."
   He’s known for making pictures of structures — either sculptural pieces he’s assembled in the studio or actual buildings and landmarks. But Mr. Katsiff isn’t interested in just capturing architecture or sights along his foreign travels.
   "It’s irrelevant whether these shots are of the Mercer Museum or the Eiffel Tower," he says. "I hope they suggest other emotional qualities, even a spiritual quality. I might start with buildings as a subject, but I don’t see myself as documenting the buildings. I’m interested in making pictures that are transcendent. A successful photograph is one that can evoke a response from other senses — gives us the jitters or makes us feel cold, for example."
   Mr. Peterson’s visual lineage is a little easier to spot than Mr. Katsiff’s who says, "I steal from so many people you can’t find out who it is. But certainly I’ve been influenced by all the classic photographers such as Weston and (Alfred) Steiglitz — the list goes on and on."
   Mr. Katsiff studied at the Rochester Institute of Technology and did graduate work at Pratt Institute. This was all during the photography renaissance of the 1960s, "…when the photographer was a hero, like in Michelangelo Antonioni’s ‘Blow Up,’" Mr. Katsiff says. "That’s when I got interested. I’ve been addicted ever since."
   Although the two men have been colleagues for years, this is the first time they’ve shown their work together. Both are dedicated to their "day jobs" with the Michener Museum, but look to photography as a meditative process and a lifeline.
   "Photography is my psychiatrist," Mr. Katsiff says. "It’s the way I judge and measure myself, the way I interact with the world and the way in which I puzzle through emotional concerns that might trouble me."
   Mr. Peterson agrees.
   "I need it," he says. "I can’t imagine being alive without it."
Two Photographers, works by Bruce Katsiff and Brian Peterson, is on view at Riverrun Gallery, 287 S. Main St., Lambertville, April 16-May 29. Reception: April 16, 6-8:30 p.m. Gallery hours: Mon., Wed.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sun. noon-5 p.m. For information, call (609) 397-3349.