Light Index.

Light Index is an exhibition that features work by three artists that examine the most essential component of the photographic process: light. This essential element, together with the concept of index, serves as a conceptual point of departure for this exhibition. The show is meant to create a dialogue between the works of Amanda Means, Ellen Carey and Erika Blumenfeld, through a juxtaposition of images that will highlight this conceptual subtext. Each artist uses light as a fundamental subject in dramatically different ways that encourage this dialogue. The exhibition intends to explore the central connection between the artists and their experiences with light. The resulting imagery operates as an index of this experience, and allows us to explore the larger conceptual significance of the index in their work.

The photographs address more than the basic ideas behind a cameraless photographic process. They examine light and its relationship to time and exposure. These artists turn away from the traditional uses of the camera, and embrace methods that emphasize the process of picture making itself. Each artist uses light and color to articulate a symbolic relationship between elements of process, formalism and aestheticism. The images are records of light, and the relationship between the images and light is "indexical." The idea of the index was first defined by C. S. Peirce, and refers to a relationship between an object and its image, where the index is connected to the object "as a matter of fact." The traditional idea is that the photograph should represent something easily recognizable and easily understandable. According to Peirce, "a photograph...owing to its optical connection with its object, is evidence that that appearance corresponds to a reality." The desire to focus on light itself moves some of the wo rk into the abstract, but Pierce's idea that an indexical relationship is comparable to "[a] fragment torn away from the object" holds true here because these images all emanate from an object of light.

Amanda Means leaves the imprint of her light source, the light bulb, on her photographic works. For each image, a light bulb is projected through an enlarger onto 20" x 24" Polaroid paper. Each 4" x 5" Polaroid "portrait" behaves differently and reveals something particular about the subject of light. As the viewer approaches a row of portraits of light bulbs that divide the wall in half, one gets a sense of looking inside the inner workings of a light bulb. We see light bulbs every day, but in Means' hands the objects seem to come alive and the illuminated filament provides the ghost of a wry smile or a hovering black cloud. These "interior" views are situated within the larger image of the entire bulb and socket. One sees both interior and exterior simultaneously, and this privileged view speaks to the indexical nature of the work. The images literally show light. Either in isolation or in grid form, the subtleties of this idea are dependent on the internal structure of an object we readily identify as a mu ndane item. Here, it operates on another level, bringing us into the bulb itself while also moving us beyond the bulb, the image and even out of the frame into the gallery space. The anthropomorphic qualities and implied landscapes present in Means' bulbs are luminous and this vibrancy resonates with the works of Erika Blumenfeld and Ellen Carey.

Ellen Carey takes photography to task with an abstract and minimalist style. Her attention to process and the ensuing subtle beauty of the pieces is ultimately very compelling. The images reflect the absence or presence of light as it hits the photographic paper; some images are extremely colorful and some record no light, but are merely the results of negatives that she manipulates by hand to cause the developing chemicals to drip. The Polaroid images that Carey calls "pulls" have a particular resonance with the other artists' work due to the emphasis on process, and the way color is used.

There are five previously unexhibited "pulls" with "pod breaks" displayed in this show. The "pods" are bags filled with developing chemicals that the artist tears open over the photographic paper, the end result being the "pod breaks." Carey uses a P6 Polaroid film that allows black to appear green--an effect that adds to the benign appearance of the "pulls" hanging loosely on the wall. These five pieces create a serene point of reflection and counterpoint to Carey's more colorful pushpin photograms. This seeming variance in style is held together both by color theory and by a minimalist approach that are constant in all of her work. The pushpin color photograms are created by placing the pins directly into the photographic paper surface in the color darkroom. Light penetrates these holes and casts thin shadows across the print surface. Carey uses light and the absence of light as twin subjects in her picture making. She pulls film through a large format 20" x 24" camera, sometimes exposing it, sometimes not. Her "pulls" and "rollbacks" (photographs that have been re-fed for another exposure) are abstract in a painterly way, and the process informs the final large scale photograph. The trajectory of the dyes leave black conical loops (no record of light). Where there is color, the film has been exposed to light, and white is a "flare" from outside on the sensitized emulsion of the film. This one-step, peel-away process reveals the soft edge brilliance that is particular to Polaroid dyes, while the large, resulting contact positive print reveals clarity and crisp detail.

The unique nature of the abstract imagery of Carey's "pulls" gives pause for reflection, and also slips subtly into the surrounding space where these ideas of color are echoed in Erika Blumenfeld's work. Blumenfeld documents the amount of light present at the moment of an exposure. Natural light serves as the object, and minimalist blue and white arcs serve as indexes of light. The abstract nature of the work collapses many traditional boundaries. Blumenfeld's Polaroid grids refer to the nature of time itself. It takes considerable time to expose all the 4"x5" Polaroids to light, and to create the grid itself. The grid here provides a larger scope that comments on the time required to physically make the work and for the viewer to engage with it.

This engagement continues beyond the physical space of the image. The blues, blacks and whites of the images slowly move toward the other pictures. Each piece seems to operate individually as well as function in a gestalt manner with the others, seemingly unable to remain within the frame. As the viewer moves through the space, the colors that resonate within each piece strike a chorus with the others; Blumenfeld's blue arc reverberates in the same numerous shades of blue as in Means' light bulbs. This progression reaches a striking note with gray grid, a grid of six 30" x 36" black and white prints of various sized and shaped bulbs that emanate a rattling sensation within the grid itself. This sensation is echoed in Blumenfeld's Light Recording: Midnight/Midday, a simple grid of nine black and nine white square panels of llfochrome paper. Seen together, they extend the idea of the index by demonstrating the implicit connection with the subject of light through the grid format. The grid extends the index beyo nd one image by repeating the idea; it also stresses the formalistic aesthetic nature of the work.

This idea is punctuated by Carey's three early black and white photograms of an enlarger lens, easel and negative carrier. These objects evoke various ways to create images, and remind us of what the picture ultimately is: an index of light. In the artists' hands, light is not just a passive ingredient; it is a tool, a subject and a destination. Just as action painters and abstract expressionists found the importance of communicating through color and the stroke of the brush, these artists have found ways to take light to a new level of expressiveness.