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'FOTO' CAPTURES CAMERA'S POWER

June 28, 2007 12:35 am

By SHEILA WICKOUSKI

For THE FREE LANCE-STAR

Roman Vishniac's "Entrance to the Ghetto, Kazimierz" is a simple study in composition, perspective and shading.

A silhouetted man is walking on a cobblestone path in a ghetto alleyway. Another smaller, shadowlike figure stands in the distance in front of a gate, behind which are apartment dwellings.

We do not know where this man is coming from, but we assume that he is headed home. The casual scene could have occurred at any time over hundreds of years in Eastern Europe.

Vishniac is one of the better-known of the hundreds of photographers whose ideas on modern themes are now on display in the National Gallery of Art's blockbuster exhibit "Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918-1945."

Vishniac's black-and-white photo takes on a dark significance in the 1930s as a document of faceless humanity, both Jewish and non-Jewish, walking not toward the comfort of a common heritage, but to the unimaginable chaos of World War II, toward holocaust in a world gone mad.

Organized along eight thematic lines, this show tells a story of the complex ideas, hopes and emotions of the socially turbulent new nations that arose from the collapsed empires of Eastern Europe after World War I.

In Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary and Poland, artists used photomontage to express the fragmentation and mechanization of society, as depicted in the part of the exhibit called "The Cut-and-Paste World: Recovering From War."

Cameras were a popular creative outlet for both artists and amateurs. Experimentation in camera work and darkroom techniques, as well as classroom theory in art schools, reflected a belief that technology promised solutions for modern life.

The "Modern Living" portion shows urban landscapes bustling with construction, with the undertones of anxi-ety that accompany massive changes.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's "Radio Tower Berlin" is a good example. Taken from an impossible vantage point for any human being, the impersonal photo is an abstract architectural record meant for modern eyes.

The people who would view such scenes were the "New Women--New Men." Their portraits do not indicate how important they are in society with the usual symbols of past dignitaries, but rather with how interesting they are to photograph.

Often shadowy, androgynous figures in awkward poses, these chic models are not only not alluring, they are often confusingly ridiculous.

The section "The Spread of Surrealism" continues with more fantastical possibilities, while "Activist Documents" records the pioneering development of photojournalism. Either would have made a thought-provoking exhibit in its own right.

Homeland photography is celebrated in the "Land without a Name" section. These traditional rustic scenes are gems, without the artifice achieved in the studio.

Austrian photographer Rudolf Koppitz's "Heavy Burden" shows a man carrying on his a head a load that is several times his weight and obscures his face. Polish photographer Edward Hartwig's "Planting Potatoes" shows a primitive agricultural lineup of women in babushkas bent over a plowed field with their faces blurred.

More exotic examples are Hungarian Rudolf Balogh's "Shepherd With His Dogs," in which a man stands steady on a barren, wind-whipped plain, wearing a formless cloak that makes him look as if he is part of nature. Czech Karel Plicka's "Peasant From Madacka" has the ancient, steady gaze of someone who has known the creation of the world.

It is surprising that while these are the most traditional photos in an exhibit of a world reeling from modernity, they connect directly to the reality of agriculturally based societies today.

One can look at these peasants and see a Chinese farmer in his field, an American Indian posing for his portrait or an aboriginal herder--for all of whom the ways of the past are still their present.

The exhibit ends as it started, with avant garde artists once again commenting with surrealistic projects and photomontage.

The tragic return to the split-apart world at war again is more raw, edgier, harder to look at but laden with meaning of these oppressive ideologies and the concurrent dissenters, a startling history lesson with powerful resonance for our own time and place.