12/77 New Art Examiner

Photography

REVIEW BY CAROL HARMEL

HAROLD ALLEN. JANE WENGER
(Hyde Park Art Center, 5236 S. Blackstone, 947-9656, thru Dec. 10.)

Jane Wenger’s troubled visions use the subject of heads (mostly those of bald men) together with other body parts isolated against stark backgrounds. Using wide-angle lenses and strobe lighting she pins these distorted body fragments through exaggerated angles against interiors, sea, or sky to create a nightmare world. Partially through severe cropping of her human subjects (amputations, as it were), and partially through an excruciating attention to surface detail, a tension is formed between the image and the image frame: the images seem to be struggling to break out of their frames, especially in the smaller prints along the south wall. Because of this tension, and because of the unity of the subject matter, the images link up with each other in an almost cinematic way, culminating in what I see as the focal point of her show, a brooding Goya-esque figure whose weight seems to drag down the horizon line itself. (No. 22).

The movement from Jane’s world to that of Harold Allen’s is extreme to say the least, a movement from darkness to the light of day, from the Romantic vision forming the world in its own image to that of the so-called documentarian, whose purpose is to stand back and reveal the subject. Here two of the poles of photography are offered in what is a very interesting job of curating.

Harold Allen is a documentary photographer who has recently concluded a 40-year association with the Art Institute of Chicago (as student and teacher). The 20 photographs here exhibited form a kind of retrospective, encompassing a broad range of subjects and times, from the Atget-like Charmerie, Montmartre, 1945 to Modern Eagle, Portage, Wisconsin, 1970, a composite. In all of them, his skill as a technician and master of the view camera, his concern for light as a revealer of form, are evident.

This diversity is both a strength and weakness of his show. On the one hand, Jane s unified vision is easier to grasp; each photograph is a reflection of the same image. Harold s hardly comprise a “style” because the subject is supreme in each of them. On the other hand, this very lack of unity (if it can be called that) points out the disparate aims of personal vs. documentary photography: the personal vision unifies the world because it is making the world over in its own mold. The documentarian (at least in aim) with a cooler, perhaps more objective eye, chooses (or is compelled) to reveal the world in its amazing diversity, without necessarily drawing connections. In this respect, Harold Allen reveals the world with the humbleness of the true documentarian who stands in awe of his subject, revealing that subject with the wonder of a child.

Price range: $45-$130. C.H.