Columbus, OH
3/06/10 4:55 PM
Draftsmen and painters must work to create pictures of interest, filling empty canvas and paper with fields and figments of pencil and acrylic, oil and ink. Photographers, by contrast, are tasked with finding those images and capturing them through the effect of light on film or, more recently, pixels and bits and however else it is that digital cameras function. Amateur photog Danielle Hart has taken that task and applied it to the various spaces of her own life, locating wonder at the baseball stadium and the beach, the ice rink and the alleyway. The odd angle at which she frames high rises, the drip she locates so strategically on a statue’s face, the diptychs she makes of a little girl facing the sea shore and wading in a man-made fountain, or of freshly zamboni’ed ice and a rink all scratched up with skaters — all of these sights are common enough, yet seen here with eyes wide open to them, wider open to them, than are most. On their own, not all of her pictures evidence the wonder with which they are taken as evidently as do others; pairings help, as do close-ups, and rightly so. Surprise often arises in the way things change from one moment to the next, from one line of sight to another, in juxtapositions of place, space and, most of all, expectation.
—Lori Waxman