Photographers Turn The Lens On Themselves

In some parts of the Kehler Liddell Gallery on Whalley Avenue in Westville, there’s a child crawling into a giant sculpture while others look on. A meeting of Segways. A ruffle of clouds over an open city square. In other parts of the gallery, nudes recline in parlors, and walk with strength and determination through ruins. They catch the photographer’s glance and stare back.

The two series of photographs, by artists (and wife and husband) Penryn and Rod Cook, are gathered collectively under the title ​“French Postcards,” a show running now at Kehler Liddell through March 28. This large exhibit succeeds in being both a display of sumptuous black and white photography and a series of works that ask interesting, important questions about the relationship between photographer and subject.

“The American documentary photographer Elliott Erwitt once said, ‘…photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place…. It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.’” Penrhyn writes in an accompanying statement. ​“I am an observer by nature. This is partly my genetic makeup, but it also serves as a self-protection mechanism. I grew up amidst some insanely talented musicians, painters, actors, and creators, and very early on decided I wasn’t going to compete. It was and still is my way of staying safe and in control.”

But, Penrhyn adds, ​“because I often experience a certain unease when I am photographing people, as if I were ​‘taking’ something from them or snatching an intimate moment that should be kept private, my subjects are often incidental to the scene. Composition is done spontaneously and instinctively and while my photos are created to be beautiful, I also want them to be interesting and prompt viewers to ask questions.”

Rod’s half of the exhibit brings up the same kinds of questions from another angle. “‘Natural,’ can it even be so if a subject is aware of a viewer? Without clothes is, in fact, the original natural but in most cultures is considered not so and in many cases forbidden in public. The nude is usually considered ​‘fine art’ and naked often is not.”

In images where ​“the nude subject is unaware of their own presence in the scene,” Rod continues, viewers can afford ​“the convenience of avoiding most self reflection on why they are engaged with the image in the first place, be it titillation, voyeurism, disapproval of, or love of the nude as fine art. An art world version of ​‘I read Playboy for the articles.’”

Rod then reveals his own motivations for his series of photographs. ​“I photograph the nude because I like to and feel that I am very good at it. I overwhelmingly choose the female nude because I adore women, and never cease to be excited by the female form. In this case I chose to try to step back and let the models find their own rhythm. I didn’t try to avoid direct eye contact or overt sensuality and as often as not only gave direction what helped with the technical and visual quality of the image while letting the model decide her own response to the situation. The best images of models come not from direction alone but from collaboration, when the model feels they have a stake in the outcome.”

In some ways it’s not surprising that the photographers’ disparate subjects lead them to the same sets of uneasy questions about the practice of photographing people. The viewer can even find aesthetic parallels in their respective work. Penrhyn’s Narrow Street and Rod’s Nude on Stone both show a fascination with the complex texture of rock; one could argue that the surface of the walls in Penrhyn’s image and the surface of the rock in Rod’s image are the actual subjects of those photographs. Then squint your eyes just a little, and the curves of the street in Penrhyn’s photograph echo the position of the model in Rod’s photograph.

But those interesting questions, once raised, are impossible to dismiss, and they imbue the photographs with a friction that makes the show that much more engrossing. Penryn and Rod Cook’s questions, after all, are the same questions that have dogged street photographers since people have been taking pictures. They buzz in the backs of the minds of photojournalists. And they nag us when we look at the image of any nude figure who has then been put in the view of the public. They’re questions that deal with issues of consent and responsibility, that play into power dynamics between women and men, between the people who live in a place and the people who are just visiting it, between races and classes.

Rod Cook’s nudes, at their most powerful, run headlong into these questions. After all, these two women are fully aware of the photographer’s presence. Rod has said they are collaborators in the image, and here that collaboration is on full display. The women look at Cook like they know something he doesn’t, The insertion of the image of Rod himself in the mirror adds a nice touch. It implicates the photographer in the questions he raises — and by extension, implicates us. If we question the motives and power dynamics at play in creating pictures of nudes, we might also question our own motivations for looking at them.

Similarly, Penryn Cook’s scenes of churches, public squares, parks, and outdoor cafes don’t let us off the hook. Unlike Rod Cook’s nudes, Penryn Cook’s subjects don’t always seem to know that their picture is being taken. Penryn’s photographs make a strong case for why this is important. She captures a subtle and wide range of emotion, a piece of the intricate fabric of day-to-day life. The colors of that fabric would almost certainly be muted if her subjects just turned and smiled for the camera. But as Penryn herself asks, what does it mean to take that picture? And what does it mean that we keep looking at it?

“French Postcards” runs at Kehler Liddell Gallery, 873 Whalley Ave., through March 28. Date nights at Kehler Liddell Gallery and Amaru continue on Feb. 4 and 5 and March 18 and 19, 5 to 7 p.m. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information.