Tropism: Photographs by Rachel Girard Reisert
September 28th- November 11th gallery hours thurs- sun: 12-4 pm. and by appointment, as well as select evenings to coincide with FOTOFOCUS events and gallery walks.
Next month Rachel Girard Reisert graces us with a stunning group of photographs in a series she calls, Tropism. Various sources define the word "tropism" as referring to the movement of a biological organism in response to an outside stimulus. In Reisert's toned cyanotype prints on Arches Platine paper, the most obvious reference to this phenomenon is how a tree and its various parts react to sunlight and to the earth they grow forth from. Branches bend and twist, roots dig and trace, and leaves turn.
Not so obvious is the reference Reisert's title gives to the printing process, and how it in many ways emulates and compliments the meaning of the word as it refers to plants. Creating the cyanotype is an historical non-silver process. She hand-coats paper with light-sensitive emulsion and exposes it to ultraviolet light in contact with a negative. The process accentuates the transformation inherent in the photograph from point of capture to point of print. Both the image and the subject matter rely upon and are transformed by light.
The bluish tone inherent in the cyanotypes mystifies the organic subject matter, as well as softening and cooling the perspective of the viewer, if only slightly or just enough to detach the images from their subjects. The photographs are relatively large in scale for the gallery's size, framed in groups of three each piece measures 20" x 48." The viewer is drawn in and out of branches that explore and defy the paper's edge, that are soft and then sharp at just the right moment to captivate and confuse. In the end one is left feeling touched and endeared to the plight of the organism, as well as captivated by the quality of the image and the work.
Please come join us on Final Friday or during regular gallery hours as the gallery participates in the City-wide photography biennial FOTOFOCUS.
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