Surfaces
(excerpt)
I find a kind of “surface tension” in some of these images. A scientific term, surface tension is the force that causes the molecules on the surface of a liquid to adhere tightly together. We’re all familiar with the way water can rise above the top of a drinking glass and drops of water form perfect little spheres; those are examples of surface tension at work. When applied to painting, photography, and two-dimensional art in general, the term describes the conflict viewers experience when reading an image simultaneously as a two-dimensional composition on a flat surface and as the simulacrum of a three-dimensional space from the world around us.
Photographs are, by nature, two-dimensional images that capture the depth of the three-dimensional scenes they reference. Podlesnik’s image of a bowl of apples on a window sill shows both the depth of the room we look into and the distant space with palm trees behind the photographer – both the scene in front of us and a reflection of the landscape behind us – as well as the still life in the foreground. This is what I mean by surface tension. The image begs for psychological analysis with its modest, small bowl full of fruit sitting next to a taller, more elegant, empty white cake stand.
Podlesnik’s photographs are not picturesque landscapes of the old-fashioned variety; he says, in fact, that he is “not interested in repeating or confirming existing expectations of picturesqueness.” Instead, his work fits the parameters of “street photography,” a mode of picture taking that began with photographers such as Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander, whose images were intriguing because of the role played by serendipity and in his own photographic practice.
Kate Nearpass Ogden
Professor of Art History
Stockton University, New Jersey