As an undergraduate student, Elsie Hull didn't really explore still photography until she began her master's of fine arts degree in film and video production at American University.
"I thought it was too easy, though [looking back] I really didn't get it," Hull said about the single photography class she took while attending the Corcoran in D.C. during her undergraduate education.
Now, 20 years later, Hull is showing a small photography exhibit at the Spectrum Gallery in Georgetown. Spectrum is in a quiet location, just around the corner from M Street on 29th, the perfect place for these serene, introspective photographs to escape the jammed traffic, four-lane-u-turning cabbies and hysteria of the city.
Her current work on display in the gallery is not arresting but inviting. The subjects captured by the artist are small windows into simpler worlds, collectively and appropriately titled "Portals."
Among the cameras Hull uses is a Holga, an inexpensive medium-format camera sometimes used by schools to introduce students to photography techniques. The border vignettes produce dark-cornered, almost circular images. After continued experimentation with this camera, Hull has an educated guess as to the outcome, but admits to some unpredictability that keeps the process fun for her.
"Sometimes [the photos] can be sharp in the middle," Hull said. "Sometimes you might end up with double exposures or artifacts."
As her photography process developed, Hull found she wanted to have better control when using a Holga. She was able to do this by attaching a different lens to the camera, an almost accidental technique.
"I was in a photo store in New York and I found this generic wide angle lens," she said. "I don't know why I bought it, but I felt an impulse."
Through careful dissection of several Holga cameras, Hull was able to find a way to attach the lens to her camera to produce a sharper final image. She later discovered how to attach the lens to a Hasselblad and a digital camera, both used to produce images in the exhibition. All her negatives are later manipulated digitally in Photoshop using basic darkroom techniques.
"Photoshop allows you to be very specific whereas a darkroom doesn't unless you are doing large prints," she said.
Beyond that, Hull prefers not to do any further manipulation beyond canceling out the black "vignette-ing" that occurs through the process of exposing medium format film.
The challenge of the circular image is in the presentation, a problem for which Hull has found an intriguing solution.
"When I thought about putting them in a rectangular frame it just didn't work for me," Hull said.
When displaying her photos for friends, Hull would attempt to mask out the rectangular edge of the paper the image was on. One friend asked the artist, "Why don't you just do something like that?" From there, Hull found a new manner in which to present her images. Digitally printed and mounted on matte-board, Hull has chosen to Velcro the final product onto a series of small, inexpensive, primed canvases arranged in manners to enhance either the subject or the way the viewer approaches a series of photographs. In one instance, the verticality of the canvases draws attention to the downward fall of a cliff diver. In another instance, the repetition of large and small canvases pulls the viewer rhythmically from one photo to the next. The framing appears interesting without distracting from the subject or putting into question the appropriate way to frame a circular image.
"Her work has always been a combination of sophistication and idiosyncrasy," said
Jack Rasmussen, director of the Katzen Center, schedule to open in Fall 2005. He has been aware of Hull's work since she first entered the arts scene showing at the now defunct K Street gallery. The two even shared a video production course at AU in the early 1980s.
"When she was painting, she was constructing these very elaborate, jig-sawed frames. They're very much a part of the work," he said. It was the mixture of hi-tech and low-tech approach to a single piece that he said kept his attention to the work.
The subjects of Hull's photographs range from somber landscapes to the captured energies of children and dogs playing. Each is elegant and rich in tones and temperature. She has largely been influenced by Henri Lartigue (1894-1986), the French photographer who spent his career photographing friends and family.
"They're full of life and exuberant," Hull said of her work.
Earlier in her work, Hull studied some of Lartigue's photographs through her painting; capturing places she has been and images of friends draws similar parallels to his influence in her current work. Sensitive, but not sentimental, these photographs defy a sense of time while still managing to capture a sense of place. Together they create a sensate, non-linear narrative.
"I'm interested in stories. That I think is from my film background," she said. "I don't necessarily have a specific story in mind when I'm putting together a show; it's more of an intuitive response to indicate a mood."
Elsie Hull's current exhibition, "Portals," is on display through March 13 at Spectrum Gallery, 1132 29th St. NW, in Georgetown. The gallery's hours are Tuesday-Saturday 12-6 p.m. and Sunday 12-5 p.m.
