Getting nature to pose

How two photographers frame the natural world

By Jeffrey Cyphers Wright

One uses black and white — the other, deep splashy color — and both have some great shots of straight-up, unadorned nature. Chip Hooper’s desolate beaches contrast perfectly with Sally Gall’s full-on blooms of spring in two new shows. Any human presence is refreshingly absent as the artists concentrate on elemental subjects.

Sally Gall has previously used black and white to masterfully portray caverns, quarries and aqueducts in her “Subterranea” series. Supplying mood and even personality to nature is, well, second nature to her. In the new work entitled “Blossoms” Gall uses bright, saturated color to great effect.

In “Blossom #1” (a chromogenic print), Gall presents a white-topped apple tree bubbling up under a cerulean blue sky. Her timing is crucial. She has pinpointed that moment of crescendo when spring is at its pinnacle. The profusion is palpable and is heightened by the sharp, almost crackling, contrast of the color. This explosion of hue and texture belies the minimalist forms Gall persues so well.

“Blossom #2” (a c-print), establishes a decidedly painterly approach and further confirms Gall’s minimalist concerns. A few cherry blossom laden twigs droop down from the top plane into an immaculate blue sky. In counterpoint, a lone fluffy white cloud drifts off toward the bottom. This reversal of expectations (clouds under branches/heavy over light) renders surprise and helps explain Gall’s overall appeal. Further animating the resultant suspension, the subjects appear to exude human attributes such as ambition, insistence and even anomie.

If sometimes a composition appears light, perhaps that is the price of achieving the simplicity necessary to strike a satisfying equation. Finally, our fecund associations with spring and its vibrancy make the images resound with an upbeat and celebratory tenor that is right on key. Gall’s work is intimate and affirmative.

Chis Hooper’s oeuvre might be described as expansive and reverential. The show is titled “New Zealand’s South Pacific and Tasman Sea,” and its subject is similarly vast. Yet just as in Gall’s gemlike work, cropping plays a critical role in creating viable dialogues within Hooper’s powerful compositions.

Astute framing firmly establishes a black edge of cliff that descends into shadow on the left side of “Cape Foulwind Beach, Tasman Sea, New Zealand” A horizon line cuts out from the sheet of rock to bisect the planar sea and sky. Blown into feathery strips, the clouds above are reflected on a sinuous sea of molten pewter below. The majesty of the scene shares its throne with the brute force of scale, both in time and space. This marriage of temporal and spatial, is refined and magnified by the choice of black and white. The evocation of eons carries a sense of nostalgia for eternity.

Hooper deftly blends verticals and horizontals to set up shimmering rhythms. Some of the works emanate such fine lines of silvery-grey that they emulate the meditative pencil drawings of Agnes Martin or Vija Celmins. The works with the most contrast appear to be the most striking however.

A handful of rounded black stones bask in a shallow tide pool (“Afternoon, Tasman Sea”). In the gradated gray-into-white tones that make up this sea/skyscape, the lozenge-shaped stones stand out like abstract notations — as arbitrary and efficient as Dalmation spots in early paintings by Jacquelyn Humphries.

A distant horizon line recedes relentlessly, dividing the ocean’s undulating surface from a curving line of billowing cottonball clouds. In this work, with its complementary bands and reflective resonance, the artist shows off a dazzling handling of volume, space and light. Who could ask for anything more?