'This Place' photo exhibits examine disputed terrain - Times Union 3/17/18, 1:18 PM

https://www.timesunion.com/entertainment/article/This-Place-photo-exhibits-examine-disputed-12643311.php 'This Place' photo exhibits examine disputed terrain Images of Israel, West Bank displayed at four venues ADVERTISEMENT

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Fazal Sheikh 2011 "Latitude 31 ? 21' 7" N Longitude 34 ? 46' 27" from the series "Desert Bloom (Wellin)

Boasting art market superstars Thomas Struth and , Magnum photojournalists and , community collaborator Wendy Ewald, and seven other photographers of significance, "This Place"

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Can a dozen famous photographers, commissioned from outside of Israel and the West Bank, create perceptive, pertinent work? As outsiders? And should they? Can an artist, in good conscience, go to the West Bank and make work that is largely apolitical, that perpetuates a personal style and hesitates to comment?

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Six million dollars later we can see for ourselves in the latest iteration of "This Place," a single exhibition event spread among four upstate colleges this spring. There is a lot to take in, and some of the photographs are printed really large, so even with the University at Albany's art museum, the Tang at Skidmore, the spacious Wellin Museum at Hamilton College, and the compact Picker Gallery at Colgate University, there is no room to spare.

Start with the big, lone Jeff Wall at the UAlbany's University Art Museum called "Daybreak," showing Bedouin olive pickers still asleep in the open air in the desert. Behind them is a gleaming Israeli prison under the grim dawn air. In this single observation, made with great care and minimal prearrangement, Wall clinically reveals the mismatch of cultures.

A few paces away, Martin Kollar's plain-speaking color documentations of bizarre and sometimes disturbing situations reveal a dry wit and a visual critique of contemporary Israel. If these startling insights appear to be without judgement, they do contribute to a larger picture that builds as you go from artist to artist.

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In general, the strongest works in "This Place" manage some political bite. At the Wellin, a long grid of aerial views of human activity in the Negev desert by Fazal Sheikh is graphically stunning. But with a preponderance of topographic evidence, along with careful documentation, Sheikh also silently questions the displacement and "erasure" of Bedouin habitations due to relocations, forestation projects, and other changes since 1948.

Wendy Ewald doesn't actually take pictures but rather hands out cameras to nonphotographers, and the results cover a huge range. Printed small, then showcased neatly on layers of shelves at both the Wellin and the Tang, they elevate the ordinary. These insiders from 14 different communities show their own worlds in their own ways, ranging from Palestinian women in East Jerusalem to Israeli women at a military academy.

Also at the Tang, Gilles Peress' array of large color images provide dry observation without drama, unlike his more famous images of conflict zones. At the Picker, by contrast, the black and white horizontal panoramas by Josef Koudelka are some of his best work ever. He packs every image with a rich visual investment in places laden with hard-edged facts about the border wall: barbed wire, convoluted barriers, and graffiti.

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These are hard to appreciate small, in a long glass case. Luckily, one outcome of the larger scope of "This Place" is the many photographic monographs that resulted (from every artist except Wall and Peress). Check out Koudelka's stunning "The Wall." Trenchant, visually condemning stuff.

In contrast, the panoramic black and white desert landscapes by Jungjin Lee are shorn of exterior meaning, reveling in brooding, gorgeous desolation. The large, gritty prints are imposing and well represented at Albany, though her book, "Unnamed Road," provides a more tactile sensibility.

More Information At the Picker, detachment from politics gets confusing with Nick Wapplington, who made bland, posed snapshots of newly arrived If you go Israeli settlers in the West Bank (in housing, he points out, deemed

"This Place" illegal by the United Nations). Across the gallery, Rosalind Fox

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Where: Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum Solomon's black and white portraits try for something different and of Art, Hamilton College, 198 College more photographically traditional, capturing diverse types, Hill Road, Clinton including many Africans and Christians, with honest, full When: Through June 10 expressions.

Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 There are several other bodies of work at each venue that overlap p.m. in appearance because they all use large format color film and a Admission: Free view camera, a level horizon, and unglamorized information. 's understated, precise land and city views describe Info: hamilton.edu/wellin or 315-859- 4396 and describe. German photographer Thomas Struth's visually similar contributions are tightly composed and ambiguous. A few Where: Picker Art Gallery, Colgate images by the organizer of the "This Place" project, Frederic University, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, Brenner, follow suit, and even Wapplington employed a large format When: Through May 20 camera for his own iterations of detached observation.

Hours: Tuesday-Friday 10 a.m.- 5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, noon-5 p.m., In all of these high-res images, most printed large and some quite Third Thursdays 10 a.m.- 8 p.m. beautiful, you can stare and study, but the point is often unclear. Is that particular housing actually a row of illegal settlements? Is that Admission: Free desert merely an example of forbidding terrain or is something Info: colgate.edu/campus-life/arts- more implied? Here we can fairly ask whether an artist can or on-campus or 315-228-7634 should maintain such apparent secure loftiness—are the

Where: University Art Museum, photographers fiddling while Rome burns? University at Albany, 1400 Washington Ave., Albany Maybe. Some will argue we should have room for art on any terms. There might be lasting truths beyond elusive current events that When: Through April 7 are mined here. Brenner, in a 2014 interview for Time, said, "We Hours: Tuesday 10 a.m. - 7 p.m., want to look beyond the political narrative." And Peress Wednesday - Friday 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., philosophized, "I am not trying to capture anything." Saturday, noon-4 p.m.

Admission: Free "This Place" is unique. It's rare to have a privately funded project with so many photographers gathered around a single goal and Info: albany.edu/museum or (518) 442-4035 given generous (though not complete) freedom. One of the project's new goals for 2018 is to create debate and Where: The Tang Museum, Skidmore "interdisciplinary inquiry" at the college level, and that is happening College, Saratoga Springs at all four institutions, with rafts of special events, course When: Through April 22 integrations, and guest speakers.

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Hours: Tuesday-Sunday noon-5 p.m., Take advantage. Some of the work does filter too easily into an Thursday, noon-9 p.m. academic zone, laden with potential meaning but also guarded and Admission: Free coded and restrained. But everything here is also terrific, and the more of the shows you can see, the more provocative sense it all Info: tang.skidmore.edu/exhibitions or 518-580-8080 makes.

William Jaeger is a frequent contributor to the Times Union.

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