On the Grid

Over at the Stairwell Gallery, there is a photo show called On the Grid by some friends of mine, Adam Ryder and Brian Rosa, on view until February 5th.

The show is really exceptional.  Brian and Adam each have very beautiful ways of seeing, revealing the ordinary beauty of isolated landscapes which exist in the spaces between civic life, following the high-tension power grids which connect one city to another.  It’s a quiet, sort of tamed wilderness that you may or may not notice in its presence, subtle and maybe seemingly mundane, but translated here in a way that I greatly admire.

I was thinking about it in contrast to the ways I love toy cameras, instant photography, plastic bodies and lenses, disposable cameras, etc.  I love them for their limitations, which are namely imprecision, unpredictability, and the loss of control.  It’s frustrating and disappointing to want to hold onto an image you see with your own eyes, usually to find that your camera sees something dramatically less magical than you do.  I like to learn that tough little lesson of attachment over and over again, but when the limitations of the medium finally work in your favor every now and again, the dreamy, accidental energy of the moment is special and unmeditated.

With the stillness of landscapes like On the Grid, however, toy cameras almost never do.  The clarity of vision and patience you feel in these photos are a whole other world, all executed here in exactly the right way.  It’s really worth checking out.

The Stairwell Gallery is located at 504 Broadway, in Providence.  See the project online here.