Bremner Benedict, Hidden Waters, Dryland Springs of North America at The Studio
Bremner Benedict, Rogers Spring, 2017-2023, Archival pigment print. Image courtesy the artist.
Bremner Benedict, Hidden Waters, Dryland Springs of North America at The Studio
By D.K. Sole
There are two exhibitions in this big central space right now. One is a solo installation of photos from Linda Alterwitz’s Portraits of the Invisible World series, but we’re showing one of them at the Marjorie Barrick Museum (where I work), so I’m not going to talk about that side of the room because I’d be too tempted to just tell you, hey, it’s good. Let me recommend Bremner Benedict’s photographs of endangered springs around the Southwest instead. They make the case for the preservation of these springs in a clear manner by being beautiful. Beauty is a great tactic: you can’t argue with it. The variety of nature is paramount: the maximal sweep of long grasses, the sharp edge of a branch pointing back to the water. The framing of the springs is forthright, the water is typically central in the picture with a distant horizon near the top and often a lip of bank or foliage in the foreground to underline the isolation that makes the pools seem understated and surprising in spite of the fact that they drive the compositions. You can imagine yourself walking through the desert and suddenly this glowing thing is there. The colours are undersaturated, and this makes them seem even more fragile and breathless, a little cold and removed, fairylandish and unreal, infirm, perhaps on the verge of dissolving? So the idea of endangerment is there in the quality of the light. Benedict doesn’t work in the Ansel Adams mode, aweing you with thrusting cliffs: the quietness of her subject matter nudges her closer to the great contemporary landscape photographer Robert Adams. “How can you disregard these beauties?” the photos ask. “How can you not treasure them?”
Bremner Benedict, Hidden Waters, Dryland Springs of North America
The Studio, Sahara West Library, 9600 W. Sahara Ave.
Aug 30, 2024 through November 23, 2024
Posted and Published by Wendy Kveck on December 9, 2024.