Negative Space

John Vettese sees what develops

by John Vettese

There was a time in photography's infancy when a humble landscape picture could seem like an illusion.

Take clouds: Their brightness kept them from appearing in early photographs. In the late 1850s, Gustave Le Gray changed this by pioneering his combination printing process in famed images of the French seashore. One negative was exposed to properly catch the details of the sky; one negative was exposed for the land and sea; and the two were layered in a single print.

It seemed believable at first blush, but sticklers pointed out the flaws. The clouds cast no shadow on the ground. They didn't reflect in the water. The scene didn't seem real, exactly.

A century and a half later, these arguments seem quaint. In her image of a tree perched on a rural hillside, Ruth Humpton shoots billowy clouds in muted, even tones. The photo is completely plausible and plain, an innocuous, commonplace scene that would never stir up debate.

The rest of her exhibit at 3rd Street Gallery, not so much. Humpton's "Realistic/Imaginary Photographs" enhances rural/pastoral scenery with a mix of black-and-white combination printing and old-fashioned hand-coloring. Unlike Le Gray, the Philadelphia-area photographer doesn't always use these techniques to portray a difficult-to-capture real-world scene. More often, Humpton's images are fantastical composites, and the results are uneven.

Celestial imagery is prominent. In a photo of hay bales dotting a shorn field, a long farm road stretches into the distance, dreamily emptying into a speckled backdrop of nighttime stars. This use of two negatives is tidy and thoughtful, the scene tranquil. Elsewhere, it can be awkward.

On the gallery's far wall, a photo shows the barren bumps of desert hills in its lower half. In its upper half, a telescopic image of the sun is layered in, arcing flares licking away at the dusty scene. As if the sensation she aimed for wasn't clear enough, Humpton forces her point by scrawling the word "caliente" across the frame.

Better is a composite depicting a marsh by night. Tidal water bubbles in the lower half, with a grassy green line hand-colored in at landbreak, dividing the water from the forest in the middle. Up top, the moon sweeps across the scene in phases: a bright orb at left that becomes dimmer with each succession. The somewhat surreal scene can be a bit much to take in, but is pleasing overall.

Hand-coloring is Humpton's other trick, and it meets with an equal mix of success and inelegance. One photo shows a mountain rising before a white-on-black tapestry of stars, the earthen portion of the image dyed a queasy lime green. It looks like prog rock-album art. Less clumsy, but somewhat pointless, is a black-and-white grove, broken only by a few leaves on a single tree which Humpton designated green.

In her strongest hand-colored work — and one of the best images in the show — we again see a recently plowed farm, where blocks of the field are shaded in maize, saffron and olive (pictured, p. 24). The colors crawl downhill and coalesce in a stream that seems to flow out of the frame, dripping on the gallery floor. Here, Humpton used hand-coloring not for capricious touch-ups or hideous blanket shadings, but as a calculated transformative device that brings the scene alive, in an otherworldly way.

The show's most dazzling image returns us to the clouds. From across the gallery, it looks like Humpton was suspended mid-air as two birds swooped in front of her, the ground far below in the distance. Step closer, and we notice layers, but they are hard to discern. Face to face with the frame, it becomes clear: We're seeing not only a photograph (the birds, shot against a white sky with a generous zoom) but a large-format negative (the trees and ground, nestled up top as if covered in a lakeside mist) matted together as one piece. It seems like an illusion, like the skies over Le Gray's shorelines — and it is — process and inventiveness used to render a tricky real-world scene. And while Humpton's technique is not necessarily new, and not always successful, the illusion at its best can be spectacular.

(j_vettese@citypaper.net)

Through May 30, free, 3rd Street Gallery on 2nd Street, 58 N. Second St., 215-625-0993, 3rdstreetgallery.com.