Opening Fri 3/6 @ 6 – 9pm
Then and now connect in Impermanence, the latest exhibition at Heights Arts. Organized by guest curator and photographer Daniel Levin, Impermanence pairs photographs of local streetscapes at different times in history.
Ever wonder what the place you’re standing in looked like a century ago? A group of local photographers, using an academic approach called Rephotographic Survey, studied old local photos to determine exactly where, when and how the photo was taken. They tried their best to duplicate the time of day the photo was shot, even attempting to stand exactly where the original photographer was standing.
The result is a collection of stunning images showcasing subtle and drastic changes to our scenery. We spoke with curator Daniel Levin on the exhibition and the process of Rephotographic Survey.
CoolCleveland: How did the idea for the exhibition come about?
Daniel Levin: The predecessor to today’s Rephotographic Survey was a system of measurements used by surveyors in the late 19th century to make a photograph of a landscape exactly in the same footprint, using the same lens, camera height and angle as the original photograph was made.
It wasn’t until 1977 that this process was adapted into the photographic art world. Mark Klett, through his project entitled Second View, began using this technique to study the landscape in an academic way. He took a second look at photographs that were made in the American West in the 1870s.
In urban areas the approach is a wonderful tool to study sociological and natural changes of use over time.
Some of your readers may have seen the powerful 2012 film entitled Chasing Ice, by renowned still photographer James Balog. Balog, who was trained as a scientist before he picked up his first camera and used still photographs using the Rephotographic Survey approach to show dramatic glacial formation recession throughout the globe, due to global warming. It’s a beautiful, if not frighteningly convincing film. The Rephotographic Survey approach is perfect for such examinations.
As Cleveland has evolved since its pre-industrialist days, to the wonderfully transitional time we are currently enjoying, I thought it might be a good idea to examine parts of Cleveland in a similar fashion.
I knew there were a variety of wonderful photographic archives available to researchers in Cleveland. That is were most of the photographers found their source photographs.
How did you choose which photographers to include? Did they create pieces special for the show?
Half of this group of contemporary photographers are quite well known in N. E. Ohio. I greatly respect the work of these photographers and I assumed from knowing them that they would love to participate in such a project.
I’m a photography Professor at Tri-C. A few years ago, I first introduced a Rephotographic Survey extended project to a Documentary Photography class I was teaching. As a group, the class spent time in the Strokes Cleveland Library Photograph Collection. It’s a white cotton glove experience that is immaculately clean and very well organized. The students didn’t want to leave. It’s addictive. A number of the established photographers whose works are shown in Impermanence also happen to be alumni of Tri-C’s Photography program.
What do you hope viewers take away from the show?
I hope the diptychs might slow down the viewer a bit, to help them rethink what bricks-and-mortar mean. So often the phrase is used in terms of discussions about consumerism. But bricks-and-mortar also suggests the permanence of our urban landscape. I appreciate the European approach to architecture which embraces reuse over demolition. I feel a society has a greater opportunity to be more aware of where it comes from when we don’t continually erase it. On the other hand, I’m attracted to change based on good principles. Unfortunately change isn’t always based on thoughtfulness.
I’m also excited when I think of all of the individuals who once lived in my personal home. It a bungalow built just shy of 100 years ago; a typical home for Cleveland Heights. I like to think of what the previous homeowners may have been wearing in 1920, how their car may have fit into my (our) garage or how they entertained themselves without television, computers or smartphones. In an odd way, I think of myself as a renter in my own home, a home I own. After all, some day some stranger will be sleeping in my bedroom.
I hope that maybe the viewers might think about some of these things.
Describe some of the pieces included.
In all honesty, there are so many subtle and dramatic points of interest in each of the photographs. I could go on and on. OK, here are two…
Nathan Migal discovered a beautiful photograph from the point of view of the old Cleveland Market that once stood where Gateway currently is. It was made on April 28th of 1942. The only recognizable part of the photograph is the smallest section of what would today be Tower City. It’s the Eastern wall, where the LeBron banner currently hangs. There are late ’30s – ’40s cars and people walking in the foreground. Above them are two billboards advertising Aunt Jemima buckwheat pancakes and Mail Pouch Tabaco.
Somehow Nathan found the exact spot the photograph was taken some 70 years before. It’s unbelievably far under the South portico entrance to The Q. The camera is so far under the portico, that it hardly feels like the camera was outdoors. The entire foreground and mid-ground of the photograph make for a dramatically new urban landscape.
I had mentioned to Greg Donley, who is both the head of Print Communications at the Cleveland Museum of Art and who is an active Board Member of Heights Arts Gallery, that I’d like to take a look at the photographic archives of the CMA. He sent me a number of scans, one of which confounded me. It was a massive marble façade with a bus that had a Model T-like frontend. School kids were getting off. The facade had a large and ornate double door, which was clearly the entrance to the museum. It looked so familiar and yet it wasn’t any of the facades I had ever driven up to or even entered as a pedestrian.
I was in my office at the college when I received it. I just kept it on the screen as I worked until it eventually hit me. The bus would today be indoors, in the glass atrium of the CMA. The façade is the North side of the original CMA building. Emily Smith made a beautiful contemporary photograph from the same camera position. I assume it must have been near the CMA’s bamboo garden. She shot it using 4×5 sheet film, so that the diptych could be printing in large scale.
Impermanence opens Fri 3/6 at Heights Arts. Join curator Daniel Levin and several photographers for a Curator’s Talk + Ekphrastic Poetry on Thu 4/2 @ 7pm.
Cool Cleveland editor Sarah Valek studied art and writing at Ithaca College. After graduation, she came back to Cle and served two years as an AmeriCorps*VISTA with the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless. She can be found on all sides of the city in pursuit of homeschooling activities for her son and the perfect soy latte. Contact her at CoolEditorATCoolCleveland.com or via Twitter.
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118