The Log from the Sea of Cortez(1951) by John Steinbeck documents his six week
expedition through the Gulf of California with marine biologist Ed Ricketts. In
her current exhibition, photographer Dana Montlack references Steinbeck’s
journey through her collaboration with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography
and Birch Aquarium in La Jolla. Her under-sea images are dissections and
magnifications of specimens and charts from the waterways of the Sea of Cortez. These lambda prints mounted on aluminum are
richly hued snippets of marine life and maps collaged in layers on mostly round
formats mimicking the eye of a microscope. While we aren’t always sure what we are
looking at, these photographic multi-images provide glimpses unavailable to the
naked eye. They are fragmentary hyper-views of the natural organic
world that appear both wondrous and confusing.
These visual abstractions border on painting as the transparent layering
of images blur our vision of the ‘original’ photographs used. Montlack’s
photo-collages are unified in their attempts to capture the totality of nature,
seeking to remind us of the ‘unseen’ universe.
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Dana Montlack SIO 15, 2013 lambda print mounted on aluminum courtesy of Joseph Bellows Gallery
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