Colby Caldwell, a local fave for the past decade or so, moves back into the realm of photography with his current show, small game, at Hemphill Fine Arts. After spending years working with Super 8 film, Caldwell has fully embraced photographic technique, moreso than the videos and photos themselves, as his art.
Entering the gallery, the viewer is greeted by his best work in the show, the gestus pictures series. These large photographs feature individuals standing in rural fields. In case you’re not a theater buff, “gestus” refers to a certain movement that defines a character. As Wikipedia notes, “It is never meant to be cliché, but is the unique, physical representation of a particular character in a play. It removes the audience from the character’s emotions, as the character simply uses a gestus to represent those emotions.” And that’s what Caldwell does beautifully here. It’s not simply a two dimensional photo of a young farmgirl (pictured); instead, the way he captures her expression and the way her hands grab the edges of her jacket as she leans into the sun give us that third dimension — that defining gestus. The older woman brushing hair away from her face in the field is someone you’ve seen before. The hunter idly holding his rifle, head thrown back, seems exposed in the wide open space. There is insight here without being sentimental or falling into Art 101 triteness.
Gallery Two is where it starts to get a little spotty. Frequently in his work Caldwell focuses on those moments that pass as we move through the motions of our lives. In small game there’s an emphasis of presence — in the gestus pictures we strongly feel the presence of the hunter or the young girl — while in his after nature series we get the opposite. Figures are noticably absent from these stark, sometimes lonely landscapes that span the cycle of seasons. Occassionally this focus works to their detriment. While after nature (5) is the perfect set-up of frozen, dreary fields drizzled with snow, toned to a bleak finish so that it screams abandonment, after nature (63), hanging on the opposite wall, is a sparse, interior forest scene that no technical mastery of color saturation can save from simply being visually unengaging. Those are very much the minority, however, and for the most part this second series is an interesting compliment to the first.
