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Friday, March 07, 2003

BY TERRY YOUNG

Thirteen uniformly mid-sized prints -- hung from the walls by black office clips -- encircle the space. Each image depicts a contemporary interior/domestic scene focusing on one or more family members lounging, reading, looking, thinking. Interior settings tie the works together.

	Review JESSICA TODD HARPER WHERE: Pittsburgh Filmmakers, 477 Melwood Ave., North Oakland. WHEN: Through March 30. Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. ADMISSION: Free; call 412-681-5449 or visit http://www.pghfilmmakers.org/.

In Jessica Todd Harper's photographs, on exhibition at Pittsburgh Filmmakers' New Gallery, figures and action are often framed in front of windows, patio doors or on back porches to suggest both a physical and mental separation from the outside world.

In "Becky in the Den" (2003) a young girl lounges reading, wearing a tank top and jeans, in front of a large, glass window. A snowy winter landscape fills the window, casting the afternoon's white light on the figure, amplifying her white room and sofa. Her thoughts enter the viewer's curiosity.

Harper's subjects exist in a private world, governed by their own individual thoughts and interactions, apart from the outside world and its influences.

Lighting of the subjects plays a primary role in the photographs. Whether subjects and spaces are flooded with sunlight or illuminated by electric lamps, attention to light romanticizes these simple domestic moments, thereby elevating their importance.

Focus on lighting and figures in domestic interiors recalls 17th-century Dutch painting, when old masters like Jan Vermeer captured figures in their domestic settings with infinite detail. Harper herself acknowledges the influence of earlier Renaissance painting on her work: "My photographs look at people in the intimate spaces of their interiors much in the same way as portraits by the Renaissance artists Albrecht Durer, Jan Van Eyck, and Sofonisba Anguissola looked at identity and human existence by mapping out their individuals' presence in their private spaces as more important than the accessory references to activities in their surroundings."

Like these early painters, Harper's focus is on the individual's presence within his personal environment, though her images offer more visual clues that tie her to later Dutch masters whose attention to human presence is parallel to detailed focus on possessions. Meticulous representations of polished marble floors, expensive maps, musical instruments, lush fashions and upholsteries signified the prosperity and middle-class values of the 17th-century Dutch merchant classes. "Mom with Becky" (2002) depicts two figures relaxed on a finely upholstered couch. In the foreground sits a wooden coffee table strewn with The New York Times and multiple remote controls. Behind the human figures are extensive bookshelves, a framed oil painting, a porcelain lamp and potted red poinsettias. Harper's other photographs depict subjects on comfortable modern or Old World furnishings, juxtaposed with sets of car keys, classics of literature, glass tables and vases of flowers, all contemporary signifiers of education, money or class.

What prevents Harper's photographs from becoming "historical remakes" or scenes of domestic bliss -- catalog photos of the good life -- is the subtle tension that comes across in the faces of her domestic subjects. At times this is played out in the tension between two people. Judith and Uwe in the "Living Room," taken this year, portrays an awkwardly interrupted narrative: A couple, seated across the room from one another -- either just finished arguing or about to fall in love again -- is physically separated in the image's background by a table of framed family photos of children, adding the weight of an involved personal history to the scene. At other times it's an individual's tension in the form of a difficult ennui at odds with her own surroundings.

This uneasiness adds a thought-provoking edge to Harper's photographs that allies her with contemporary art photography.

Terry Young is a freelance writer.