Ohio photographers make nature their focus in Riffe Gallery exhibit

Photographers with an eye on Earth are featured in a Riffe Gallery exhibit.

“Earthy Delights” spotlights 15 Ohioans who point their lenses to capture the natural world.

The curator, Marcella Hackbardt, chose the environmental focus after observing photographic
trends in the Buckeye State, whose “agricultural element,” she said, inspires picture takers.

“We have beautiful natural parks; we have ways to get out into nature,” said Hackbardt, an art
professor at Kenyon College in Gambier.

“Just being in Ohio, I think we’re influenced a lot by the things that we encounter. And a lot
of that comes through in the work but in various ways.”

Beyond photographers who work in Ohio, represented, too, are those who travel elsewhere.

Several manage to suggest nature without directly depicting the outdoors.

Beneath the surface, Ricky Rhodes of Lakewood documents the dark environs of the Morton Salt
Mine in Fairport Harbor. In “Tunnel to Salt Face,” a vehicle is seen at the end of a long pathway;
in “Salt Miner,” a worker is posed stoically with a pile of rocks to his side and heavy equipment
behind.

Javier Gutierrez of Columbus captures a feeling of kinesis in his photographs of Ohio locales: “
Escala” presents a low angle of a man scaling a tree, while “Brinco” shows a woman leaping a set of
logs to another.

Best of all: “Tormenta,” in which a figure stands in front of a stormy sky illuminated by a bolt
of lightning weaving through dark clouds. The picture pulses with electricity.

Kent Krugh of Fairfield offers a more meditative vision in his tree photography. Through an
unusual process, he takes numerous shots while circling a tree.

One photo is laid over the next; in the completed piece, the tree stands out boldly while the
surrounding area — which changes as Krugh moves — turns into a misty mix of images.

“That is why the tree has this ethereal motion to it,” Hackbardt said. “Part of it is very soft
and transparent at the edges.”

Trips that Paula Willmot Kraus made to the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery in Dayton are
represented in five powerful photos. In the museum archives, Kraus, of Oakwood, photographed
stuffed or otherwise-preserved animals — such as a pair of small birds — with warmth and
tenderness.

The eyes and coat in “Oh Deer” are startlingly lifelike, despite the clear wrap in which the
animal is covered.

Mark Slankard of Rocky River takes the viewer to Turkey, where monolithic structures share the
frame in “Watermelon Truck, Istanbul” with a street-side watermelon proprietor; and in “Cow Under
Tree, Istanbul” with a cow seeking shade under a solitary tree in an empty lot.

On the other hand, Deborah Orloff of Sylvania negotiates an inward journey in photos reflecting
her family history.

“She was going through some of the photographs that her mom had owned,” Hackbardt said. “They
were all stuck together and ruined; inadvertently, they had been exposed in the basement of her
mother’s house to water and humidity.”

Orloff re-shot the images, warts and all.

“Honeymoon Portrait” reproduces a 1965 snapshot to which sections of paper and tape look to have
been affixed. Other deteriorating pictures seem to have been stuck to the central image, which
depicts a woman presumably on her honeymoon. The work evokes the effect of the elements on old
family photos.

The can’t-miss exhibit includes enough photographers that each visitor is apt to have different
favorites.

Also on view are photos by Darren Baker, Robert Ladislas Derr, Virginia Kistler, Joseph Minek,
Emily Hanako Momohara, Jeannette Palsa, Jordan Tate, Jessica Wascak and Emily Joy Zeller.

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