As a visual geographer, I map an area through symbolic images, investigating its identity and mythology. I have returned many times over the years to Manoa Stream, in Honolulu, Hawaii. The stream drops down from the tropical rainforest below the Koolau Mountains and traverses the broad, and historically significant, Manoa Valley. Today, houses cover much of the valley - what was once rich farmland supporting taro cultivation and, later, rice. Almost unnoticed, Manoa Stream slides along behind the back yards, on the edges of the human settlement. Here, the distinct shadows that emerge from the greater darkness, the tree branches that arch out to catch our eye, the volcanic stones that now lie exposed, the sun’s rays that move across the valley to highlight and then bury event after event, and the water itself, continually passing, expanding and contracting, its level and speed changing day by day - all of these play their part in the ongoing drama. They create shifting forms that catch reflections from our mind, portents or omens that reveal vistas into buried paths of thought. I use my camera to explore and chart the various layers of strata in this shifting world, seeking to release the sacred from the secular. In Chicago, I photographed in the Wooded Island part of Jackson Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in the late nineteenth-century. He intended to build a natural area incorporating "the elements of mystery through effects of aerial perspective, and the complicated play of light and shadow and of reflected tints in extended composition" (1893). He desired to create effects "like that of music, which is of a kind that goes back of thought, and cannot be fully given the form of words," (1880) in order to influence the imagination of viewers. I found this landscape conducive to my own interests. I looked for situations where I could understand its more emblematic character, a surreal world grounded in the subconscious mind. I worked particularly along the edges of the days where the sun, so extreme in its angles, lay stress over the landscape, extending or shrinking the shadows. I set out fields of interpretation, seeking to encompass what I saw in calligraphic forms. Peter Fendrick
Photos by SU Teacher Poetic, Rich in SymbolismPeter Fendrick, who teaches in the Syracuse University Writing Program, is also a photographer and frequently joins image to text. An exhibition of his black-and-white silver gelatin photographs called Stretching Surfaces is on view through June 30. Taken over the course of several years in Chicago, Illinois and Manoa Valley, Hawaii, the photographs are brooding and rich in symbolism; their titles are like condensed poems. Many are strongly calligraphic, such as Ley Lines and You who must make choices, which were shot in Jackson Park, Chicago. Silhouetted branches thrust across the surface while in the background light shimmers over wet rock or snow. Pretense and Exile taken in Hawaii, is a dramatic images with dark rocks creating a massive diagonal barrier between the ripples of sand in the foreground and the wind-swept spume above. A delicate sprig with one leaf is caught at the shadowy water’s edge. In Weight at Night, lines of deep black work their way into the sparkling flat rock face: light plays over a phallic leaf or pod that lies in a crevice just its size, and catches a similarly shaped finger of rock behind it. One of my favorites is In Time, We are Lost to the Sky, with its floating rock circle, its beam of reflected light. Small plants grow in the foreground through water so still that their stems are equally defined above and below the water line. The best of Fendrick’s photographs, with their close-ups of rocks and branches creating context-less yet associative abstractions, brings the work of Aaron Siskind and Minor White to Mind. Sherry Chayat
Percolating: Fendrick ExhibitStretching Surfaces blends Peter Fendrick’s interests in photography, topography and poetry. It offers black-and-white photographs taken in Chicago’s Jackson Park and Manoa Valley, Hawaii, as well as text, such as the poem “Why his Trouble to Cut the Hair?” In keeping with the title of the exhibition, the artist doesn’t serve ideas and themes overtly; he relies on suggestion and inference. The photos taken at Jackson Park, for example, present images of a discarded tire floating in water, of a long branch dipping into water, of roots breaking through concrete, and of the ground itself in the piece titled Our Memory continues to Disappear. These images, taken over several years, document the park’s landscape, but that’s only the beginning, because the artist is trying to make other connections. Our Memory continues to Disappear, for instance, deals with the transience of all life on this planet. This comes not through any gimmicks, but through photographing an ordinary scene and approaching it in a different context. Fendrick’s images of Manoa Valley, Hawaii, meanwhile, capture the beauty of that area’s landscape, but again that’s only one aspect of their dialog with the viewer. Photos such as They came without warning and Pretense and exile are not conveying a sense of paradise; they are communicating physical and spiritual turbulence. The mood isn’t one of harmony, but impending chaos. Moreover, in Under the Eye of the Clock, the photographer is working not just with the overall scene, but also with a lone bottle. That’s a small aspect of the overall photo, but it achieves a disproportionate influence as the only sign of humanity on the landscape. Inevitably, the viewer’s eye is drawn to the bottle. In these and other photos, Fendrick is both presenting his images and inviting us to join him on a journey, in a different way of looking at our surroundings. That’s a fairly loose package that may not appeal to those who appreciate a more straightforward presentation. On the other hand, Stretching Surfaces is not abstruse; the artist is working with a visual shorthand, and he presents enough clues to orient viewers toward his perspective. On that basis, the exhibit succeeds very well. Carl Mellor
Surreal in FeelingPeter Fendrick’s black and white photographs are surreal in feeling. Incantations of Conjecture brings Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 monolith to mind. The individual features of the picture are irrelevant. You don’t really know what you are looking at but you look because it is captivating and mysterious. What is it? Where is it? How is it? Nancy Ungar
Barefoot in the Mountains: An Interview with Peter Fendrick
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