REVIEWS: ‘On Golden Pond,’ ‘Dance ‘82,’ ‘Glass Menagerie,’ Metropol
jan. 27, 1982
emerald arts & entertainment
Ted Orland set out across country
in his red bus intent on capturing a
series of portraits of the American
persona Instead he wound up with a
with series of '20th century
landscapes America seen from the
freeway His show is currently on
exhibit at the Photography at Oregon
Gallery in the University Museum of
Art
For Orland in his first year as a
photography professor at the
University, it is first showing here
The beginnings of this group of
related images evolved out of his
journey to do a workshop in North
Carolina Planning to drive
cross-country, Orland thought that
getting there ought to be half the
fun " Since he had done very little
portraiture in the past. Orland
purchased a camera suitable for
close-ups and loaded up his bus.
Photon"
Orland was intent on capturing
American faces and bodies, but
through a serendipity of sorts he
found a new subject to focus on
‘ The few extra feet of height in the
bus gave me a perspective that made
all the difference in the world," he
said Instead of portraits he found wsf
the environs of interstate highways
provided a perfectly shallow field of^
vision for his new camera — a view
that was enhanced by the layering
effect of his 127mm lens
Admittedly a closet romantic."
Orland went against the grgjft and
chose not to do the objH^Mffy "rape
of the land" photos He loi^Kd
instead for those points where an
unconscious equilibrium had been
reached between humanity and
nature
"The guard rail, the cut and fill, the^
fences a frontag^Md. or telephonj
wires and railrglfljjKks receedingj
into fields and4QBs appealed to j
sense of neatnes&«nd order
it's not these specific things that^
artist or photographer is really
thinking about It’s what they
photo by marfc pynos
ted
ORLAIVD
AND THE
QUEST FOR
THE 2 0 T H
C E N T U R Y
LANDSCAPE
"«T *
represent that's interesting the
intangibles that live in the spaces
between objects — things like love, or
silehce, or awe
Capturing these scenes, however,
-
‘^%fy main problem
Jr ~
" 3Yas in avoiding
eing rear-ended.’
posed some problems. Highway
patrolmen stopped Orland more than
once. "In most states it's illegal to
stop on the freeway unless it's an
.< emergency, so I had to work fast," he
said "Most of the photographs were
•i"* taken during only two or three
minutes of stopping time ”
Because the photos had to be
taken from a tripod, shots had to be
set up quickly My main problem
was in avoiding getting rear-ended,
since I only drove 50 miles an hour
and even that's a little too fast
when you're translating what you see
in color into subtler tones of black
and white "
Precise in composition, the photos
are the result of this ability to
transpose reality into a black and
white world with discrimination and
agility They are subtle gauze-like
images that reverse the traditional
process of blackness decorated with
white and gray Orland
conceptualizes a field of whiteness
and embellishes it with details of dark
tone His image of a sun s last rays
touching cloud wisps in Wyoming is
an example of this minimalism At
first glance, one is not sure if there is
any image at all
Each image is an impression of
formalized static beauty, composed
of elegant lace gray. From a casual
perspective they possess no
disturbing elements, no sense of
disonance They are so clean as to
seem foreign, almost alien, as with
the photo of Orland atop his bus
Death Valley in the distance,
shadows in the foreground, the
scene resembles a post-card from
another planet
Aside from this surreal quality,
there is an underlying'content that is
captivating. It is a probing
questioning of our constipated
American vision Orland removes the
plain and ordinary from our brainmills
and gives us a fresh look at the world
become invisible
In this new series Orland creates
wordless telegrams of dispassionate
views. While he emphasizes that he's
"not out to educate the world," he
does teach us something with this
enigmatic embroidery of light and
paper He gives us the opportunity to
touch reality with someone else s
fingers, to be connected formally
only in seeing, leaving our
imaginations unbound and free for a
flight of fancy
by tony buda