Form and Movement: Photographs by Philip Trager
National Building Museum
Washington, DC
December 27, 2009
by George Jackson
copyright 2009 by George Jackson
This exhibit of Philip Trager's photographs has been up for some time but having seen it only now, not long before its last day on January 3, I want to go again. Trager takes pictures mostly of structures (buildings, bridges, statues) and dancers (postmodern and some ballet), and does so preferably in natural light - which often means out of doors. What he captures is the timeless transience of his subjects. It is an aspect seldom looked for.
We expect to see structures in the open, but seldom dancers. As performers, as the wearers of much makeup, dancers are generally photographed on stage under artificial lights. Even studio shots rely on unnatural light sources, sometimes blending them with direct or indirect sunlight. It is good to report that Trager's dancers remain recognizable when removed from their usual settings and placed out of doors. He isn't a photographer like Max Waldman who makes dancers so shiningly ideal that they all look alike.
The Bill T. Jones / Arne Zane group is its casual self as pictured by Trager, and Mark Morris' company looks strong, sensual and somewhat wild. There's an amazing 1989 shot of Arthur Aviles. He's like a hoop lying on its side in the air and coming at you over grassy ground. Motion also resonates in another great outdoors picture - the Jacob's Pillow Men Dancers lifting a soloist; their group effort and his singular sense of balance and flight are palpable. Classical line is captured in a shot of a Miami City Ballet trio in jete across open space. Manuel Alum, Tere O'Connor, Kathy Rose, Michiyo, Eiko and Koma, and John Kelly are also among Trager's subjects and each was photographed as an individual.
Aptly, the mimetic storyteller Kelly's pictures focus on his fingers and face, giving prominence too to shadows cast by the fingers. This raises the question of whether daylight could have made those shadows. Probably not, and there's no visual evidence that this session was shot out of doors. Yet the sensibility is that of being immersed in unrelenting sunlight.
Although each photograph is unique and the subjects are identifiable, there is a Trager style. What in these pictures gives the dancing, the posing or the just being a dancer that everlasting air of impermanence? I think it is the contrast between the culture, the deliberate structure, the choreography of the humans and the impersonal attributes of grass, trees and sky. The appearance of the humans is what it is because of volition and despite the particular slant of the sun. The changing appearance of the natural objects, however, is due solely to impersonal forces.
