The Light-Bearer

John Vettese sees what develops

by John Vettese

I tend to associate motion blur with music.

It's all those years of shooting concerts, working in low (and occasionally no) light and being told your flash is verboten. The photographer needs to find some way around the darkness, and sometimes the easiest route is opening up the exposure time and letting the color and movement of the subjects capture the rhythm of the song.

Benjamin Pierce makes the same aesthetic connection, but on a much more literal level.

The centerpiece of the Philadelphia photographer's "Transfigure" exhibit, showing at the Painted Bride through March 21, is titled Contours. This captivating series of images shows a male nude holding a blue light, dancing across the frame. As the model moves, his body stretches and distorts into an amorphous shape; as the light moves, it traces lines and patterns.

Even viewed as standalone images, without any musical context, this series still suggests sound; the glowing arc, popping up and down across the photograph, could be the sine wave of a sonograph.

But move down the gallery wall and the context presents itself. Adjacent to the series of framed photographs is a mounted television screen, where a video slideshow of the images plays, set to an audio accompaniment.

In the headphones, Pierce's somber baritone sings a quartet of Celtic and early American folk songs a cappella. Each vocal phrase has a corresponding image, and as the cycle progresses, it becomes apparent that the traced blue lines in those images reflect the rising and falling of notes in the song. (If you happened to read Pierce's artist statement beforehand, you would know this going into the multimedia portion of the show. But discovering it unawares is more fun.)

The video for the first song, "Colorado Trail," presents photos differently from its counterparts by isolating each image to only the light trail; four trails are layered diagonally across the screen, switching to a fresh screen with each new verse. This makes it more pointedly obvious that you are, in effect, "seeing the music"; it serves as a visual cue for the rest of the series.

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The three successive songs — "The Day is Past and Gone," "My Lagan Love" and "Shenandoah" — are matched with a cycle of standalone images, now featuring the model in the frame. With each comes a new reaction, a new movement of body and light in correspondence to the lyric and melody. The blue lines arc upward on the high notes and plunge with the lows, remain flat on monotone phrasings and create jagged ridges and cliffs on moments of modulation and vibrato.

As the lights show a crystallized, concrete representation of the music (think of them as following the notes on a page of sheet music), the light-bearer seems to take a more figurative approach.

The motion blur causes the model to appear as a capricious body, breaking from its mortal constraints into something more ephemeral. Considering that the songs deal with strenuous travels, death and bereavement, this is appropriate. The crook of the neck and navel are doubled as the form moves across the screen, forming a downward-gazing face on a contemplative verse. The plunging hand, gripping the blue light, reaches out with glowing stubs of fingers in a more exploratory verse.

Pierce's other work on display in "Transfigure" also works to deconstructionist ends, breaking down and restructuring figurative photography. In The Visitor, an out-of-focus person at the end of a hallway appears as a bas relief as he or she mugs, poses and dances; Graces places nudes behind a cream-colored scrim, creating a ghostly translucence.

These other images work best on the abstract level. But with the accompaniment of music and colorful motion, Contours serves as equal parts fact and metaphor.

(j_vettese@citypaper.net)

Benjamin Pierce: Transfigure | Exhibit through March 21, reception March 6, 5-7 p.m., Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St., 215-925-9914, paintedbride.org