PhotoLens: 2011

I visited the Carnegie Museum of Art’s exhibition, Pittsburgh in the City: Downtown Pittsburgh. I was particularly interested because you mentioned that it included CMU photographers Mark Perrott and Dylan Vitone, as well as work from Annie O’Neil and a handful of other Pittsburgh artists. I was also curious to see Pittsburgh in unique ways; a whole bunch of the pictures in the exhibit give the viewer an interesting perspective on subjects they’ve never seen before.

While there are number of photographers featured in the exhibit, Dylan Vitone’s work was something that I looked forward to going into the museum. I’ve taken a couple classes from him and have always been interested in his work. His choice of subject, use of negative space, and the use of panoramic shots to manipulate these things makes for really strong, emotional pictures.

Walking into the exhibit, I noticed it was separated into three areas. There were also small islands of pictures, as well as a couch with Pittsburgh photobooks and a TV which has the photographers giving little blurbs about the city. The light was incandescent, which clashed a little with the natural light in the surrounding exhibit. The walls were a gray-maroon color that made it a little hard for my eyes to focus. The pictures were ordered in a seemingly loose manner, perhaps with each section as a different part of time in Pittsburgh. The exhibit was curated by Linda Benedict-Jones.

One piece that stood out to me was Dylan’s Planning Meeting picture. The large format drew me to the picture within the gallery. What I enjoyed was that the piece captured so many important elements within one photograph; The white police officer trying to keep everything in control, the strong black woman trying to prove her point, the people just farther behind, trying to listen, those in the far left, that have lost all hope already, and the curious man on the right on the phone, perhaps with a little smirk on his face. All of these subjects are important for what the image portrays. Dylan’s caption of the photograph brings some context to the situation, but the amount of emotion you can observe just from the photograph is impressive. Other panoramics from Dylan use the combination of images to accentuate the negative space (his picture of the soldier on a laptop, the bikini model in the fountain), but this one builds to the story with multiple subjects with nearly independent stories.