New Photography Gallery Focuses on Both Classic and Contemporary Work

For the fourth time since its founding in 1972, the Jan Turner Gallery has moved--this time to larger quarters at the quiet end of Melrose Avenue near Beverly Hills. Along the way, it also has spawned a new gallery of photography: the Turner/Krull Gallery, located on the open second floor of the new space.

Heading the new photography venture is gallery director Craig Krull, who was director of the Jan Turner Gallery for the past three years. (The Jan Turner Gallery’s new director is Carol Donnell-Kotrozo.)

Among the photography that the gallery will feature is work with a “classic, formalist approach”--but with a contemporary content that “reflects some sort of social inquiry,” Krull said.

The images of Lewis Baltz--one of 25 photographers whose work is included in the gallery’s inaugural show, “Photographing L.A. Architecture”--are a case in point. In his “New Industrial Parks” series of the 1970s, Baltz documented the commercial growth of Irvine, matching his cool, minimalist, almost abstract aesthetic with the cold and impersonal industrial landscape, Krull said.

The gallery’s second show--which opens in August--will juxtapose landscapes by Timothy O’Sullivan, the 19th-Century photographer who documented the American West, with works by a contemporary counterpart, Robert Adams. Adams is another advocate of the “empty, quiet aesthetic,” Krull said. “His subject matter is the American West and the open landscape--and civilization’s intrusion upon it and restructuring of it” through subdivisions and other development.

But not all the work shown will be minimalist and cool. Krull also hopes to pursue some local historical photographic tacks--”digging up the interesting undiscovered roots of Los Angeles”--and show more manipulated photography (in which the subject photographed is altered in the final image through darkroom techniques or sleights of exposure).

For instance, Krull will exhibit work by Los Angeles photographer Edmund Teske, whose images represent the “painterly, mystical and spiritual kind of work” that was a lesser-known counterpart to the classic “pure” photography of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, Krull said.

Finally, the gallery will feature photography-based or photography-related work by artists who do not primarily identify themselves as photographers--work such as the “smog collectors” of Kim Abeles.

Abeles has conceived a method for using downtown Los Angeles smog as an artistic medium, by placing sheets of clear glass bearing stencils of tape on her rooftop for extended stretches of time. When the tape is removed, a negative image (in more than one sense of the word) is revealed.

The process, Krull noted, is reminiscent of a photogram--the classic form of experimental photography that produces an image by placing an object between a light source and light-sensitive paper.

“Photographing L.A. Architecture” through Saturday at the Turner/Krull Gallery, 9006 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. (213) 271-1536. Open Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

HUSH, HUSH: The issue of art censorship has cropped up repeatedly over the past few years, with photographers such as the late Robert Mapplethorpe--whose work was temporarily banned in Cincinnati because of its sometimes homoerotic content--virtually becoming household names because of the controversy. A slew of art exhibitions have addressed censorship head-on. And now the Photo Art Gallery in Burbank is lending an intriguing twist.

For a show titled “Self-Censorship”--with an opening appropriately scheduled on the Fourth of July--gallery director Eileen Webb contacted photographers whose work has been the subject of either legal action, FBI investigations or other restrictions on freedom of expression. She asked them to provide examples of the work--along with their own instructions for censoring it, in an exercise of their artistic control.

Included in the exhibition are works by photographers Mark Sawrie, Ken Martin, John Hesketh, Lys Martin, Donald Rogers, Joe Ziolkowski and a New York photographer who goes only by the name Jeff. Their photographs have been publicly censured, legally challenged or deemed unexhibitable because of their alleged satanic content, alleged violation of child-pornography restrictions on depictions of naked children, alleged sexual explicitness, general irreverence, or use of the contemporary-art approach known as appropriation. That practice involves making outright copies of the work of other artists (or of ubiquitous cultural material such as advertisements), usually on the theory that everything that makes an impact on a person becomes a legitimate part of his or her own experience.

“Art that is suppressed is not generally painting or sculpture--it is usually some more contemporary medium like photography, because it’s more accessible to the bulk of people,” Webb said. “My personal opinion is that if Mapplethorpe had painted, no one would have raised an eyebrow--they would have said, ‘Oh, it’s his imagination.’ But strong work is suppressed because of the power of photography.”

In the exhibition, pointedly placed black masking tape and black felt-tip pen marks figure prominently. One photographer provided instructions that his photographs face the wall, so that viewers have to actively turn his work around to get a look at it. Another chose to censor one of his pieces using American flags and .38-caliber bullet holes.

Ironically, Webb noted, the works are seldom as graphic as they appear to be--and often seem more dangerous after black tape is applied. The power in a piece, she noted, sometimes lies “not in what you say but in what you don’t say--and you can do it in such a way that people can’t do anything to you.”

Webb said she personally feels “censorship is absurd--hopefully, if freedom means anything then people have the responsibility to judge for themselves.” But artistic self-censorship may to some extent be inevitable.

“I think all artists in order to be successful ultimately have to censor their work,” Webb added. “At least if artists censor their own work, they’ve retained some artistic control. I’ve allowed them to be their own manipulators, which is more in keeping with what art is. It should be allowed to exist on its own terms.”

“Self-Censorship,” through Aug. 16 at the Photo Art Gallery, 150 S. San Fernando Blvd., Burbank. (818) 846-0673. Open 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and 2 to 6 p.m. Sunday.

KIDDIE NO-NOS: Also addressing the issue of censorship--albeit in a very different arena--is the current show at Every Picture Tells a Story, the gallery of original art from children’s books. On view through July 27 is a show called “Freedom to Read,” which includes illustrations from banned and censored children’s classics as well as illustrations celebrating the sheer joy of reading.

An early publisher’s file copy of Lewis Carroll’s 1865 classic “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” is one of the books on view. It was not only judged anti-religious and an attack on the politics of Carroll’s day, but it was also once banned in China for portraying animals on the same level as human beings, according to Lee Cohen, one of the gallery’s owners.

Also included is Margot Zemach’s “Jake and Honeybunch Go to Heaven”--a depiction of a black man’s trip to heaven and return as an angel that has been called racist and anti-religious--and a number of books on a Halloween theme that have been branded satanic.

“Almost anything having to do with Halloween or ghosts or witches has at various times been taken off school reading lists, often by the (political) far right,” Cohen said. “And there’s an insidiousness to what follows: Once schools take a book off their reading lists, they tend to go out of print, and publishers are reluctant to reprint them or bring out books with similar subjects. It amounts to a quiet kind of censorship.”