The Peter Fetterman Gallery Shows Photography by Jerry Uelsmann & Pentti Sammallahti

Written by Stanley Overstrand Sunday, 18 December 2011 00:22

Santa Monica, California.- The Peter Fetterman Gallery is pleased to present two exhibitions: a series of images by distinguished contemporary photographer Jerry Uelsmann and introducing the work of Finnish photographer Pentti Sammallahti with a selection of images shown in Los Angeles for the first time. Both exhibitions are on view from December 17th through March 1st 2012. Using multiple negatives to produce his surreal, dreamlike photographs, Jerry Uelsmann has developed a singular artistic vision which has carried him through a nearly 50 year artistic career. Firmly entrenched in his traditional darkroom compositing practices, Uelsmann continues to produce magical and thought-provoking multi-layered imagery without the help of modern computer-base techniques. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1972. He is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, a founding member of the Society of Photographic Education and a former trustee of the Friends of Photography. His works are featured in the permanent collections of many of the world's most renowned museums and national galleries.

Pentti Sammallahti was born in 1950 in Helsinki, Finland. By 1971 he began to exhibit extensively in Finland and throughout the world.  Sammallahti describes himself as a nomad who enjoys the nature of the great north, the darkness, the cold, and the sea. Sammallahti, a master craftsman, carefully tones his prints, to create a poetic atmosphere of desolate silence.  He was included among the 100 favorite photographs in the personal collection of Henri Cartier-Bresson in 2003.  Since 1979, he has published thirteen books and portfolios and has received awards such as the Samuli Paulaharju Prize of the Finnish Literature Society, State Prizes for Photography, Uusimaa Province Art Prize, Daniel Nyblin Prize, and the Finnish Critics Association Annual.


Uelsmann was born in Detroit, Michigan. While attending public schools, at the age of fourteen, there sparked an interest in photography. He believed that through photography he could exist outside of himself, to live in a world captured through the lens. Despite poor grades, he managed to land a few jobs, primarily photographs of models. Eventually Uelsmann went on to earn a BA from the Rochester Institute of Technology and M.S. and M.F.A. degrees from Indiana University. Soon after, he began teaching photography at the University of Florida in 1960. In 1967, Uelsmann had his first solo exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art which opened doors for his photography career. Uelsmann is a master printer, producing composite photographs with multiple negatives and extensive darkroom work. He uses up to a dozen enlargers at a time to produce his final images, and has an large archive of negatives that he has shot over the years. The negatives that Uelsmann uses are known to reappear within his work, acting as a focal point in one work, and background as another. Similar in technique to Rejlander, Uelsmann is a champion of the idea that the final image need not be tied to a single negative, but may be composed of many. During the mid-twentieth century, when photography was still being defined, Uelsmann didn't care about the boundaries given by the Photo Secessionists or other realists at the time, he simply wished to share with the viewer the images from his imagination and saw photomontage as the means by which to do so. Unlike Rejlander, though, he does not seek to create narratives, but rather "allegorical surrealist imagery of the unfathomable". Uelsmann is able to subsist on grants and teaching salary, rather than commercial work. Today, with the advent of digital cameras and Photoshop, photographers are able to create a work somewhat resembling Uelsmann's in less than a day, however, at the time Uelsmann was considered to have almost "magical skill" with his completely analog tools. Uelsmann used the darkroom frequently, where his works came to life. At the time Uelsmann's work first came to popular attention, photos were still widely regarded as unfalsifiable documentary evidence of events.

However, Uelsmann, along with Lucas Samaras, was considered an avant garde shatterer of this popular mindset and help to expand the artistic boundaries of photography. Despite his works' affinity with digital techniques, Uelsmann continues to use traditional equipment. “I am sympathetic to the current digital revolution and excited by the visual options created by the computer. However, I feel my creative process remains intrinsically linked to the alchemy of the darkroom.”

Uelsmann's photographs are not meant to depict a familiar place, but rather allow the viewer to transcend the frames and take them on a journey through the unfathomable. Through the picturesque representations of his subject matter, this becomes possible. Like the Pictorialist movement in the twentieth century, Uelsmann's work played on big ideas, and because those ideas are so vague, the artist did not allow room for literal interpretation of his work, but rather left the interpretation to the subjective. Uelsmann believes that his work touches the viewer on a personal level and communicates his emotion better through the unimaginable settings that he creates. Though the initial reception of his images were less than accepting, the uniqueness of his technique and composition soon became what critiques came to love in his work. During the mid-twentieth century, photographs were seen as a documentation of the concrete. Obvious conflicts would come to light when Uelsmann presented his work, merely because he chose the photographic medium as his mode of communication. The curator who asked Uelsmann to come to the Museum of Modern Art went out on a limb asking him to exhibit his work. Luckily for Jerry, the MoMA is renowned for showing the avante garde, taking pride in helping to define modern art. Formally, Uelsmann composes his work in black and white, with a vast compliment of grays and mid-tones throughout. One of the defining characteristics of his work, however, is the stark contrasts seen throughout Uelsmann's body of work. He contrasts the organic with the artificial in almost all of his work, and frequently includes the use of more than one focal point in his work. Placing eyes on walls, windows on trees, and shrubbery on the artificial are common elements within his work.

Born in London, Peter Fetterman has been deeply involved in the medium of photography for over 30 years. Initially a filmmaker and collector, he set up his first gallery over 20 years ago. He was one of the pioneer tenants of Bergamot Station, the Santa Monica Center of the Arts when it first opened in 1994. The gallery has one of the largest inventories of classic 20th Century photography in the country particularly in humanist photography. Diverse holdings include work by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sebastião Salgado, Steve McCurry, Ansel Adams, Paul Caponigro, Willy Ronis, André Kertesz, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Lillian Bassman and up and coming photographer Jeffrey Conley.  Peter and his colleagues are committed to promote the awareness and appreciation of the most powerful of the mediums in an intimate, user-friendly salon environment. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.peterfetterman.com

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