Visual Arts

Gary Tischler • March 25, 2013

The more distant the recent past becomes, the more it tends to appear in our immediate rear view mirrors.

In America, we often suffer from selective memory, bracketed by convenient decades, or categories—Reagan’s Eighties, the transforming, revolutionary 1960s, the conforming, placid Leave-it-to-Beaver-disrupted-by-Elvis Eisenhower 1950s, the Greatest Generation, WWII, the Great Depression, the Roaring Twenties, and so on.

Rarely do the Seventies appear in that mirror with any intensity, and when they do, the images are thought to be grey and indistinct, the music bland or discordant, the cars too long and the gas lines longer. There’s a certain disdain and disconnect that’s accumulated about the decade, as if it was mildly depressing with signs of American decline appearing like pimples on a once confident teenagers face, it’s as if nothing much happened, and whatever happened, we’d just as soon forget about it and move into Reagan’s morning in America.

So what are all these folks doing here, many standing in line waiting to get into the National Archives last Friday?

Most of them were waiting to see the new exhibition “Searching for the Seventies, the Documentary Photography Project,” showcasing some 94 photos from about 22,000 taken by 70 photographers from 1971-1977.”

The title alone suggests that the Seventies haves gotten lost somewhere in the overcrowded American imagination which now feeds on reality shows that aren’t real, access to everything and connection to all, mostly without focus.

The documentary photography project is reminiscent of similar Depression Era efforts, including the classic James Agee/Walker Evans book “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” as well as the Roosevelt era Farm Security Administration’ photography program. “In Search of the Seventies” was a project of Documerica, which in turn was funded by the new Environmental Protection Agency, it had as a goal the idea of dealing with the energy crisis, a nascent spirit of environmentalism, urban renewal, economic crisis and challenges and the role and the rights of new political and social movements and identity by women in an America whose diversity in terms of racial, ethnic, gender and sexual identity, diversity was rapidly becoming visible and active.

Put that way, the project, instigated by EPA public affairs employee and former National Geographic photo editor Gifford Hampshire and headed by National Archives curator Bruce Bustard, seems almost dry and political.

It’s anything but that—while its focus seems to be on environmental issues—it appears to have reshaped the meaning of the word environmental to include the American human landscape, the human face that reminds us of ourselves over a period of ten years that were anything but uneventful. The result—as seen in the nearly one hundred photographs—is a look at how and in what ways and where Americans lived in a changing environment—the literal one as well as the metaphoric and social one.
On the day of the exhibition’s opening last week, there were lines, and inside, the seventies crowd mixed with young professionals, people who had brought their kids late in the day, and surely many of us who saw some vestiges of our younger selves in the photographs. “Oh my god,” one woman said, “there’s my Buick Skylark”. Cars, in fact, play a large role in the exhibition—as polluters, in a massive junkyard piled like GM auto corpses on top of one another, as rusted and abandoned by the side of a road in Arizona, as sleek, long American cars as proudly displayed in front of a garage in Lakewood, Ohio.

“Searching for the Seventies” isn’t necessarily about the dangers to the environment per se—although it came about a year after the first Earth Day was held, the EPA was signed into existence law by Richard Nixon. The photographers—all working with color, all of them gifted and talented—had a broad mission to follow what they were interested, what their lens and hearts saw, or so it seems judging by the results, some of them with very specific assignments. Broad themes are also here—“Everybody is a Star”, “Ball of Confusion”, “Pave Paradise”, alongside the specific journeys Jack Corn moved through Appalachia—traveling through West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia, coal mining territory, where he photographed the miners, their plights their families, many of them suffering from black lung disease, or the dangers inherent in the grueling work they did. There are miners. There’s a pool hall. There’s the hopeful young face of Clarice Brown, 19, who worked as a secretary for the United Mine Workers in Charleston, West Virginia, the man with the red helmet and lamp in Virginia-Pocahontas Coal Company #3 close to Richlands, Virginia.

There’s John H. White, the Chicago Daily News photographer who shot images of Chicago’s black population and neighborhoods, which struggled with poverty but also exuded a new vibrancy captured by his lens.

There’s Lyntha Scott Eiler who went on assignment to Arizona, especially in the north, capturing development surges, Native American children, the effects of strip mining and the smoke from power plants.

And then there’s Tom Hubbard, who once worked for the Cincinnati Enquirer and returned to his old stomping grounds to find a little bit of the soul of 1970s America in Fountain Square, an all-purpose square and park in downtown Cincinnati, which appears not so much as a specific place but a generic American place with a fountain, benches, musicians and jugglers, lunchers and people playing chess and protesting and carrying signs, much as you might find at Freedom Plaze, Dupont Circle or Farragut Square. The clothes look different, hats are from then not now, and dresses are as short as they are now and bell bottoms are the rage among dudes.
In a section called “Everybody is a Star”, you see the emerging people who fueled some of the outbursts of change in the 1960s—protesters, a man with a t-shirt emblazoned with a USA logo, wearing tie-dyed pants, sporting a beard and muscles and a black lab puppy. You see them all, rising up, the young black couple, he in a blue suit, topped by an Afro, she in bright red dress, three women sitting outside a retirement home in South Beach, farmers keeping safe during a dust storm, migrant workers, a bright-eyed teenager in her bedroom in Meeker Colorado, a guy selling Italian Lemonade.

You don’t necessarily hear America singing.

Actually, it’s John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival or Linda Rondstadt, bawling her man out with “You’re No Good, You’re No Good”—or Carole King going on with “I feel the earth move under my feet” as you move along.

What you see is planes, trains and automobiles, people waiting in line for a Metro shuttle in Bethesda, the smoke and rust of factories, run-down neighborhood, small towns hanging on, diners and the freeways of America.

What you see in the rear view mirror is the daily rhythm of change in America, moving out of the sixties, trudging toward the eighties. What you see in this rear view mirror is a younger face, looking vaguely familiar. [gallery ids="101195,143776,143770,143743,143765,143749,143761,143755" nav="thumbs"]

Ari Post • March 13, 2013

Hillyer Art Gallery
9 Hillyer Court, NW
www.ArtsAndArtists.org

Through March 29, Hillyer Art Space is hosting three exhibitions. Narciso Maisterra’s exhibit, “Passing Through the Body Without Staying,” is a testament to an emotional process of recuperation from illness via artistic creativity. In January 2011, Maisterra had an accident that affected his physical appearance. As soon as he regained the use of his right arm, he resumed painting, and the work in this show became the key to his recovery. Maisterra decided to start a series of self-portraits inspired by the ugliness and sadness he saw to create an unsympathetic image of himself. The series shows an artist using art as therapy to familiarize himself with his new face. Jungmin Park, in her exhibit “The City Stories,” portrays the relationships between cities, nature and people. She personifies both urban and natural objects and encapsulates their existence within a single memory, which she visualizes with natural and man-made objects. Garth Fry explores the psychology of isolation by creating shapes and forms that are void of applied color. He investigates this concept through his use of raw, coiled paper and glue. Visual tension is created through his use of light and shadows, further emphasizing refuge and loss of identity.

Jane Haslem Gallery
2025 Hillyer Place, NW
www.JaneHaslemGallery.com

“Endless Flowers” is a group exhibition at Jane Haslem Gallery, running through the end of April, the title of which is as pure, beautiful and evocative as the artwork it represents. From watercolors and drawings, to aquatints and engravings, the show takes the audience through a veritable botanical journey, filled with the floral beauty, natural wonder, and intimate perspectives on our daily environments in their relation to the its surrounding plant life. Two qualities that unify the works are light and delicacy, whether represented through the soft translucence of a petal, the clean and playful symmetry of potted wallflowers, or a nettled pillow of wildly blooming Queen Anne’s lace. The craftsmanship of the artists also shine—the texture of Billow Morrow Jackson’s oil painting Flowers on a Table or George Harkins’ watercolor, Berries and Bluejays, are haunting and substantial, and a wonderful compliment to the downy fragility of the sun-washed red tulips in Nancy McIntyre’s silkscreen Everett’s Front Window.

Cross MacKenzie Gallery
2026 R St., NW DC 20009

Cross Mackenzie Gallery is pleased to present “Through the Trees,” an exhibition of new paintings by Virginia Commonwealth University art professor Kurt Godwin, one of the D.C. area’s most accomplished artists. Art in America critic J.W. Mahoney, describes Kurt Godwin’s previous body of work “Philosophy of Nature” as follows: “These paintings intentionally marry three visual worlds: the plain representation of natural place and organic growth, the abstracting of conditions in physical reality according to scientific iconography, and various symbol systems that serve as analogies to the qualities and nature of a
transcendent reality.”

In this new show, “Through The Trees,” Godwin achieves that “transcendent reality” by returning to the representation and abstraction of natural place – he is painting the shimmering, hypnotic, mesmerizing light. He has shed his complex layering of symbols and scientific imagery to concentrate on the pure powerful force of the radiant sun. Godwin is a magician with paint and he wields his brush skillfully, delivering lush surfaces, animated brushstrokes and dabs of singing color. The viewer gets glimpses of a burning sunset, a reflection of a cloudless cerulean sky and a fractured, mid-day white haze.

Leafless dark tree trunks in shadow act as filters for the light that bends around their silhouettes. One gets the sense that the light would be blinding without the vertical shields that protect one’s eye’s from the harsh rays behind – while at the same time that light beckons like a stained glass window. For some, these woods are dark and threatening, the branches cage-like. For the artist and this viewer these paintings are beautiful, peaceful reminders of walks through the trees, away from the noise and danger of the world inspiring a feeling of awe in nature and sunlight – a transcendent reality.

Studio Gallery
2108 R St., NW
www.StudioGalleryDC.com

From March 27 through April 20, Studio Gallery will be featuring the work of three artists. Veronica Szalus’ work, “Down to the Wire,” is an evolving concept exhibit that explores fluidity through irregular and contrasting forms through both dimension and movement. The installation uses manipulated materials that are fragile, delicately balanced, and often porous, exploring continual nuanced shifts of form, much like our natural environments. Sculptor Brian Kirk is also inspired by natural forms, but equally by man-made objects. His metal sculptures utilize geometric shapes and forms, while his stone and glass casting are more organic. Harriet Lesser’s paintings are inspired by the manipulation of natural elements in a different way—her work explores the relationship between making art and cooking. [gallery ids="101199,143810,143804,143801" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • February 28, 2013

STILL HERE,?BUT NOT FOR LONG
Here are our selections of some eclectic, shouldn’t-miss offerings now at local theaters, which will be ending their runs in March.

Metamorphoses
I hear the word amazing all the time—but here’s something that’s truly amazing—the amazing writer-director and visionary interpreter of classic stories Mary Zimmerman’s take?on ancient myths and stories based on Ovid’s classic text. You’ll laugh, weep, be astounded and moved by this production, and maybe get wet as the production is set in and around the perimeter of a large pool full of churning, emotional water and terrific actors acting out scenes from ancient myths. No intermission, at Arena Stage’s Mead Center for American Theater through March 17.
Also at Arena Stage, and entirely different and contemporary is the applauded new play “Good People” by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire which won Best Play honors from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle in its Broadway run. The production stars Johanna Day as a single mother in South Boston struggling to make ends meet, and includes Andrew Long as her long-lost boyfriend. Through March 10.

Spring Awakening
A Broadway hit musical about feverish young students in love and lust in 19th Century Germany has a rock beat, and its thumb on adolescence angst of both current and past kinds and seems a perfect play to start the Olney Theatre Center’s new 75th Anniversary season. Olney Theater artistic director Jason Loewith calls the play “effervescent, thrilling, artistically rigorous, emotionally charged and designed like nothing I’ve seen at Olney Theatre Center be- fore.” Steve Cosson directs through March 10.

The House of the Spirits
Based on the novel by famed Chilean writer Isabel Allende and directed by Jose Zayas is?a generational play in Spanish with English subtitles at the Gala Hispanic Theatre through March 10 at the National Center For the Latino Performing Arts in the Tivoli Theater in Columbia Heights.

The Convert
A powerful play about subjugation, colonialism and cultural identity and loss by the terrific young playwright Danai Gurira at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre is studied, emotionally and electrically charged, and features a powerhouse performance Nancy Moricette as a young woman struggling between competing cultures and religious beliefs. Through March 10.

Hughie
Eugene O’Neill’s late-life study of a man named “Erie” Smith searching for new meanings in his life stars Richard Schiff of “West Wing” fame in the title role and is directed?by Broadway veteran Doug Hughes through March 17 by the Shakespeare Theatre Company at the Lansburgh Theatre.

Henry V
William Shakespeare’s rip-roaring, grand play about power, war and politics in action as a young English king invades France. Star- ring Zach Appelman as Henry V and directed by Robert Richmond, it’s been extended at the Folger Theatre through March 10.

The ______ With the Hat
continues at the Studio Theatre, a red-hot production of Adly Guirgis’s profane, dangerous new play directed by Serge Seiden with?a top-notch cast of characters trying to make sense of their often rage-filled lives.
There’s still a chance to get a double-dose of David Mamet—the classic kind in the Round House Theatre production of “Glen- garry Glen Ross” through March 3, where you can soak up the lives of competing, desperate real estate agents, and in
“Race” at Theater J, the current controversy conscious incarnation of Mamet in a play about murder and race through 17.

Shakespeare’s R&J
In which four young students discover a forbidden copy of “Romeo and Juliet” and act it out is Signature Theatre’s first-ever in-the- round production. Directed by Joe Calarco, it runs through March 3.

Coming Up Later This Spring
Shakespeare at the Folger Theatre
Robert Richmond will direct the Folger Theatre’s production of “Twelfth Night”, one of the Bard’s most popular romantic comedies April 30-June 9. Notwithstanding the play, there’s also Shakespeare’s annual birthday celebration at the Folger Shakespeare Library April 21
The Return of “Fannie and Alexander”
“Fannie And Alexander” was probably the sunniest, most optimistic and warm movie ever made by the late and renowned director Ingmar Bergman (of “Persona”, “The Magician”,?“The Virgin Spring” and “Cries and Whispers” fame. Now it’s become a play and a part of the expansive multi-arts Nordic Cool Festival throughout the Kennedy Center through March 17. “Fannie and Alexander” reappears as a production of the Royal Dramatic Theater of Stockholm directed by Stefan Larsson in the Eisenhower Theatre March 7-9.
Hello Dolly!
We’re having a little Thorntown Wilder?run at Ford’s Theater. “Hello, Dolly”, the super-sized hit Broadway musical courtesy?of composer Jerry Herman—and based on Wilder’s play “The Matchmaker”—will appear as a co-production with Signature Theater, with Signature artistic director Eric Schaeffer, who staged a magnificent “Meet John Doe” here— taking the helm. Broadway veteran Nancy Opel stars as Dolly Levi, with Ed Gero as half-a-mil- lionaire Horace Vandergelder. March 15-May 18.?
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Nico Dodd •

Wolf Trap
Helen Reddy, March 7 & 8?
Catie Curtis, March 28?
John Eaton, March 30?
A Prairie Home Companion, May 24, 25
Looking Towards Summer?
Bill Cosby, June 15?
The Temptations & The Four Tops, June 27
NSO @ Wolf Trap

John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts?
Bobby McFerrin, May 13
S&R Foundation Overtures Concert Series: Ori Kam, viola,?Mar. 21
NSO Pops: Trey Anastasio / Steven Reineke, conductor?May 22
An Evening with Patti LaBelle, March 25
S&R Foundation at Evermay
Tamaki Kawakubo, Violin and Ori Kam, Viola, March 26
Yu Kosuge, Piano, April 1?
Soichi and Kaori Muraji, Guitar, May 24
Overtures Chamber Music Project: Tamaki Kawakubo and Friends, May 29

The Birchmere
Leon Redbone, March 10
George Thorogood, March 12

The Hamilton Live
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, March 3
The Rebirth Brass Band, March 6
Allen Toussaint, March 15?
The Bad Plus, April 10?
Toots and The Maytals, May 22

Strathmore
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, March 20
Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell and Richard Thompson Electric Trio, March 29
Diana Krall, April 10
Gladys Knight, April 25 & 26
Bela Fleck and The Marcus Roberts Trio, May 10

Also Coming Soon
Sweetlife Festival 2013, May 11
DC Jazz Fest, June 5-16
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Georgetowner •

Each month, interior designer Cynthia Reed and style-savvy publisher Sonya Bernhardt will collaborate on a window of inspiration, while celebrating a story inspired by the best of culture, cuisine and homegoods.

CELEBRATE VALENTINE’S DAY
Whether you’re in a romantic relationship or not, this year celebrate the loves in your life. Valentine’s Day, the holiday of love, is for all that you love. Our inspiration is a treat of churros y chocolate, a long-standing tradition from Spain. Churros, a crunchy donut-like pastry, gets dunked in a thick and velvety dark chocolate sauce. We set our table with elegant porcelain, light linen, napkins and luscious throw and, most importantly, our friends. We’ve paired our beautiful chocolate with orange and red, colors of love and warmth. Here are recipes and places where you can indulge.

To purchase Items in the photo:

The Tables and bench are available in any size. wood, and finish. Please contact Bernhardt & Reed for more information.

Linen, throws and napkins are available at Timothy Paul Bedding

CHURROS Y CHOCOLATE

Ingredients

For the churros

•3 oz (ounce) caster sugar

?•1 tablespoon(s) Ground cinnamon

•4 oz (ounce) Plain flour?

•4 oz (ounce) Self raising flour

?•1 pinch of sea salt?

•2 tablespoon(s) olive oil

?•1.76 pint(s) sunflower oil (for frying)

For the chocolate sauce

•7 oz (ounce) dark chocolate (roughly chopped)

•2 oz (ounce) Milk chocolate (roughly chopped)

•2 tablespoon(s) Golden syrup

?•10.53 fl oz (fluid ounces) double cream

Method

1. Mix the sugar and cinnamon together and set aside.

2. Make the chocolate sauce. Put all the chocolate in a heavy-bottomed saucepan with the golden syrup and cream and heat over a low heat, stirring continuously, to melt the chocolate, being careful not to let it burn. Alternatively, heat with short bursts in the microwave, stirring between each burst.

3. Sift the flours with a good pinch of salt into a metal or heat-proof bowl and make a well in the center.

4. In a separate bowl, mix the olive oil and 450ml boiling water together, and pour into the well, beating it well with a fork to get rid of any lumps. The dough should be slightly soft and sticky to touch. Let it rest for 10 minutes.

5. Fill a large, heavy bottomed saucepan with the sunflower oil – it should be about one-third full. Heat the oil to 325 F or until a small piece of bread browns in less than 30 seconds.

6. Add the dough to a piping bag with a star- shaped nozzle and squeeze out churros directly into the hot oil, cutting them with a pair of scissors into the length you want. Be careful?not to cook more than three at any one time, or they will all stick together. Fry for about 3 to 4 minutes until crispy and golden. Remove from the oil with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper. Sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar. Reheat the chocolate sauce and pour into little cups for dipping with the churros.

This recipe comes from Mexican Food Made Simple by Thomasina Miers

Where to find churros y?chocolate in Washington, D.C.

?If you don’t feel like making your own churros, you can find them at many restaurants in the area.

BODEGA

3116 M St. NW

BOQUERIA

1837 M St NW

DOLCEZZA ARTISANAL GELATO (2 LOCATIONS)

1560 Wisconsin Ave. NW

1704 Connecticut Ave. NW

FARMERS FISHERS BAKERS

Washington Harbour, 3000 K St. NW

CHURRERIA MADRID

2505 Champlain St. NW
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Ari Post • January 17, 2013

Over thousands of years, portraiture has taken on a history and life of its own. In Egypt and other ancient societies, portraits of gods and rulers were ubiquitous. Though no examples remain today, ancient Greek painting is known to have developed a highly accurate portrait style, the evidence remaining in sculpted Hellenistic portrait busts of emperors and historical personalities from Alexander the Great to Socrates. By the zenith of the Roman Empire, portraiture had absorbed and propelled Greek and Etruscan traditions with artistic advancements and imbued them with senatorial political currents and religious and ancestral usage.

Skip ahead a few 1,000 years, past the Renaissance and the Dutch masters, the dreamy exuberance of the Baroque, the self-aggrandizing methodology of the Enlightenment and the emotional revolt of the Romantics, through roiling, ungodly tides of Impressionism—throw the invention of the personal camera and the cinematograph in there somewhere—and over the Vienna Secession, Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Post-Modernism, Warhol, Conceptualism, and into the thick of the Information Age, where the plugged-in masses can cast their picture-phone portraits into a depthless technological sea as quickly and frequently as they can take them.

So, considering as many things up to this point, I often wonder what a drawn or painted portrait has to do with anything anymore. It can feel like a stuffy tradition, as dated as muskets and cravats, most often employed as an exercise by art students or as social posturing by royal families and self-important dignitaries. Frankly, compared with a good photographic portrait, a fine art portrait today looks a little awkward, out of place and self-conscious (Did anyone catch the recent Kate Middleton portrait fiasco?).

“Portraiture Now: Drawing on the Edge,” at the National Portrait Gallery, takes on the challenge of portraiture’s fate, pulling together a collection of contemporary artists who are moving the subject forward with fresh relevance. The artists featured in this exhibit use both timeless and modern techniques to deal with portraiture’s historical baggage as well as its inherently personal nature, presenting a cross-cultural smattering of identities and legacies for our time. The artists explore who we are and who surround us, where we come from and where we might go, and grapple with rendering the likeness of a broader, more disparate society that can no longer be cleanly identified.

Mequitta Ahuja is an African American and South Asian artist born in Grand Rapids, Mich. Her self-portraits are large, colorful fusions of her religious and cultural backgrounds, which she patches together to create her own personal history. It is a series of expansive, quilt-like canvases, which look as if they grew organically as more space was needed, cluttered with stamps, marks and washes of color. She places herself in the center of the compositions, surrounded by vaguely mythological plants, cryptic hieroglyphics, and a variety of symbolic markers from Eastern and Western traditions. Collectively, the works are enchantingly amorphous, offering a singular portrait of one woman’s bold emergence from her wild and untamed heritage.

The small, uniform, nearly translucent graphite portraits by Rob Matthews are on the opposite end of the spectrum from Ahuja’s self-portraits. With a softness and precision of light that recalls Vermeer and an unsettling emotional hollowness, Matthews renders meticulously detailed graphite drawings of his friends and family that consecrate the mundane affectations of our lives. His subjects each hold an object, a reference to medieval saints, but in place of bibles, swords or quills, they hold basketballs, crocheted skulls, house cats and turntables. The blank, distant stares of his portraits are like an acceptance of mortality, and the portraits turn into odd memorials of the “pre-deceased.”

Like Matthews, Ben Durham makes portraits of the people from his hometown, though he is further distanced from his subjects. Born in Lexington, Ky., he derives his source material from the local police blotter. These are people he knew in his childhood, some now arrested for traffic violations, others for assault or murder. Durham writes out his memories of them on thick handmade paper, using the mug shots as guidelines for his words. As he reconstructs his memories, a portrait composed of entirely handwritten text emerges. The clarity of the portraits are stunning, but the effect of a written story rendered unreadable from physically running over itself is an altogether beautiful sensation. Without being overwrought, these works pose the eternal question of what it is that defines each one of us, and illuminate the inescapable ripple effects of our past.

Adam Chapman’s digital works do not privilege the finished artwork over the pieces of it. His digital animations aggregate 150 of his own portrait sketches, and proceed to pull and push about their disassembled elements of line and shape on an LED screen. The moving pieces float in and out of the screen, occasionally and briefly reformulating into one of the portraits. Chapman custom-built the software, and according to the artist’s statement, every second of the installation is original, and every time a portrait is formed it is altered, shifted in some way from its initial incarnation. The portraits are continually forming, dissolving and reforming, sometimes without coming together at all. Like moments of clarity amidst the overwhelming malaise of a waking life, only briefly do the mechanics of the world flash brilliantly into focus.

So, what does portraiture have to do with anything anymore? Perhaps nothing. But if we take the time and exert the effort, it can offer us perspectives on our own lives that ultimately define the way we experience things—from our relationships with friends and family, to the effects our past, to the small rituals we unknowingly create to help us through our lives. Surely it is worth a look.

“Portraiture Now: Drawing on the Edge,” is at the National Portrait Gallery through Aug. 18. For more information, visit www.npg.si.edu

Gary Tischler • December 11, 2012

If you’re dreaming of a white Christmas, you might wander over to the Ralls Collection before it’s too late.

You have until Dec. 15 to catch the exhibition, “The Photographs of Frank Hurley.” You want white—you’ve got white—the white of Antarctic ice, icebergs, ice floes and snow and blizzards, as endured by the men of 360-foot wooden ship Endurance, all part of a mission by English explorer Ernest Shackleton, who set sail for the Antarctic in August of 1914 with his crew and official photographer, an Australian by the name of Frank Hurley. They were leaving behind England and Europe, where World War I was just beginning.

Shackleton was attempting to become the first man to lead an expedition that would walk across the Antarctic from the Weddell to the Ross Sea. His expedition—named the Imperial Transantarctic Expedition—never accomplished that. Instead, the Endurance—it was named after a Shackleton family motto–was trapped in the ice along with the crew, which remained on the ship for a year until it sank. The men were then forced to live in what they managed to construct out of what was left of the lifeboats, subsisting on penguin and sea lion meat, until they were eating boiled bones. They moved to a barren island from which Shackleton set sail with five men on one of the lifeboats to try and reach a whaling station in the South Atlantic. After a harrowing 800-mile journey, he returned with help to rescue the rest of his crew, including Hurley. All of the members of the expedition survived.

Shackleton’s journey was a failure but in an age of brave exploration his survival and the rescue of his crew became a legendary story—a legend built on solid, black-and-white evidence that came with almost artful emotional content.

Marsha Ralls bought 35 of Hurley’s photos from the National Geographic Society 35 years ago and ended up keeping them. Hanging on the walls of her gallery in Georgetown, the images make an odd assemblage—they’re full of the kind of grandeur and stories that keep trying to escape the boundaries of their frames and edges. Each pictures seems to contain a frozen story.

Hurley was no stranger to the Antarctic, having accompanied Australian explorer Douglas Mawson on a trip to the Antarctic on the Nimrod. His photographic results led to his appointment on the Endurance.

The photographs in the Ralls exhibition appear to encompass the first year of the crew’s stay on the Endurance before it sank. The look is almost fantastic, like a visual tall tale, except, of course, that they’re real images, especially the photographs of the ship frozen in tundras of ice. The ship seems at once a powerful contraption and one totally in the grip of helplessness. Against the vast expanse of ice, the ship at times seems like a toy, the men working on the ice stick figures. Especially haunting is an image of the Endurance at night.

Hurley’s pictures—including one showing him draped across a mast, or underneath the ship, at work—are famous. There have been books about the expedition, stories and tales and pictures, all of which has elevated the failed expedition to the realm of legend. But it’s the pictures that tell the story, keep it alive in the mind as fact, a living fact of what men can endure, of how precious and powerful the earth is, we and the creatures in it (In one image, a group of king penguins seem to be in conference.).

According to stories about Hurley, he was a taciturn sort of Australian who was a doer, a great maker of pictures and also maker of makeshift environments —a dark room on the ship. He was without question brave—he dove into icy waters to save negatives, then returned from his ordeal with the expeditions to jump into the midst of World War I, chronicling the fortunes and misfortunes of the Australian troops in France and at the battle of Ypres.

“The Photographs of Frank Hurley” through Dec. 15 — The Ralls Collection, 1516 31st St., NW; 202-342-1298.
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