Jerry Uelsmann hallucinates for you

By GREG COOK | February 29, 2012

Prodger spans Uelsmann's documentary photos from the 1950s to his first altered photos in 1959 ("I began working more intuitively and just trusting that; then people introduced me to Jungian psychology and they had a field day analyzing me") to work from the past few years. In Edge of Silence (2007), ripples in water reflect in sky above, while the shore and its reflection alternate upward into a sturdy unreality like an M.C. Escher stairway. In the end, it's the inherent believability of photography that makes the magic work, getting you to trust what you're seeing before the floor drops away. ^

Read Greg Cook's blog at gregcookland.com

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Topics: Museum And Gallery , Photography, Peabody Essex Museum, Peabody Essex Museum, More

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ARTICLES BY GREG COOK

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ALTERED IMAGES | April 30, 2013
Among the handsome Washington Street storefronts of AS220's renovated Mercantile Block building, with their neo-old-timey signs, is the residents' entrance to the building. It is against AS220's religion to leave any space empty that can be filled with art. So the lobby is the AS220 Resident Gallery, which occupants of the building take turns filling with their stuff.

IN THE CITY | April 23, 2013
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