Reviews | fine art, editorial, commercial photography & design | Wendi Schneider

Body Count

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 19:38:05 -0600

By John H. Lawrence, The New Orleans Art Review - Nov/Dec 1995

In Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" one of the characters takes great pride in a certain possession: a copy of a photograph showing a naked woman and a Shetland pony. It is reported to be the earliest pornographic photograph. Though Vonnegut's construct is fiction, it makes a point about photographs of naked human beings: a fascination with that subject has existed since photography's beginnings and that fascination remains continuous and unbroken. Examples of it, from this century and last, are displayed in "Naked: a Body of Work" on view at A Gallery For Fine Photography.

Obviously, not all (probably not even most) pictures showing human nakedness are pornography. The unclothed body has been among the most enduring examples of artistic classicism, but as a subject, it still pushes a lot of people's buttons. The subject of nakedness is a charged one, and when addressed in a photograph, the voltage oven is turned up. Though never totally "truthful," photography at its optical root is an unidealizing medium. Perhaps the description, the literalness of the product is just too much to take in some instances, and people turn away in revulsion or become riveted in fascination. An overriding trait of the pictures in this show is that their description almost always remains in the realm of the physical and tactile. The substance beneath the skin - what the people portrayed without their clothes are really like - is rarely explored. It is almost as if their nakedness is more of a masking presence than clothing is.

The show's most controversial item may well be the one that was never intended to be included in the first place: a copy of the exhibition's announcement (featuring Franco Salmoiraghi's image of a female nude being cradled by a disembodied male hand) that was returned to the gallery. Penned across the offending image were the recipient-turned sender's instructions that his or her name be removed from the gallery's mailing list. The creases on the folded invitation add an element of violence (no doubt an unintended one) to the figure portrayed. When all is said and done, though, the selection of pictures is both instructive and pretty tame. Robert Mapplethorpe is represented not by an infamous outtake from The X Portfolio, but by an elegant composition of of a trio of nudes, shown full length from the neck down, that recalls nothing so much as the three graces. The headless figures lose any individuality - the focus ison their perfect bodies that recall 19th century photographic studies of classical sculpture. Curiously, Mapplethorpe in the latter part of his career photographed reproductions of such sculpture. Wendi Schneider's lush odalisque owes more to French photographer Eugene Durieu and his contemporary and compatriot Eugene Delacroix's 19th century romanticism than to the 1990s. A more classical treatment of the female nude is hard to imagine. Schneider's image is further softened by restrained hand-coloring.

The array of photographs (some hundred in all) run the gamut of styles, photographic intent, history and process. There are early paper prints, alluringly beautiful autochromes, colltypes from Eadward Muybridge's "Animal Locomotion" series, tri-color carbon prints, various species of gelatin silver processes and others. The approaches range from Jerry Uelsmann's seamlessly constructed impossibilities to Eikoh Hosoe's humorous "Sunflower Children", a row of nudes standing like sentries along a roadway, their faces hidden behind enormous sunflower blossoms held in front of their heads; from Helmut Newton's gritty, angular and amazonian life-size photographs of women (who in separate images using the same models and poses appear clothed and unclothed) to Joyce Tenneson's waiflike apparition in the softest of pastel colors; and from Brett Weston's stylized artistry to the naivete of belle epoque "French postcards."

"Naked: A Body of Work" begs the question if anything new can be said about nakedness or the nude in photography. That is probably not the point of this show. Its point seems, rather, the presentation of a lush cross section of the subject, by some of its more celebrated practitioners. A lot of recent controversy surrounding the nude in photography is absent from the exhibition; though Jock Sturges is represented, there is no Andres Serrano, no Joel Peter Witkin, no Sally Mann. But the absence of their photographs hardly makes an impact on what is a thoughtful and strong exhibition. There is probably little that has not been done with, to, or about the human form in the realm of photography. To try to include all of it would hardly be possible or advised. As a subject, the nude may be a hackneyed one, but this effort on Royal St. shows, it does not have to banal.

Nature's Own Impressionism

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 04:39:57 -0600

By D. Eric Bookhardt, Gambit, New Orleans, 1992

As the long days of summer simmer on, the city sometimes seems to be melting. The streets resemble a rambling sub-oceanic ballet as the air thickens with a billion droplets of incipient steam. It is dreamy, even impressionistic at times.

We look for ways to adjust our lives accordingly, and the pace slackens as we settle into cruise control mode, routinely pausing for snowballs or iced coffee. Adapting to life in the torrid zone is as much mental as physical, an equilibrium of exertion and repose. It is important to think cool thoughts and convert life's rough edges to a smoother flow of events.

As familiar landmarks seem to dissolve under the sizzling solar surfeit, it is interesting to envision this as an instance of nature's own impressionism. A potentially helpful form of homeopathic mental imaging, this reminds us of the impressionist movement at its inception. In 1868 Claude Monet exhibited The River, an epochal work of diffuse pastel luminosity. In fact, it looks a bit like Bayou St. John on a hot July afternoon.

Today, all Monets are locked up in museums and private collections, their prices at auction run up astronomically by jaded Japanese billionaires. So too Degas, Renoir and all the best-known impressionists. It is very much the star system - the big names go platinum and then some.

Yet, there were lost of impressionist artists, and some of the less famous ones were interesting nonetheless. Their works are mostly still around and Dixon and Dixon, the French Quarter art and antiques emporium, recently brought 40 such paintings back from the continent...

. . .Though we usually associate impressionism with painting and sculpture, photography also evolved through this stylistic epoch. Many turn-of-the-century photographs were similarly diffuse, and while this seems at odds with the medium's innate acuity, they could be compelling. A glance at a few such photos at A Gallery for Fine Photography - including a superb English river scene by Alvin Langdon Coburn - bears out photo-impressionism's potential.

In this vein, The Artist, a gum bichromate print by George Seeley, is satisfying in the manner of a fine charcoal sketch. While photo-impressionists were accused of mimicking painting and drawing, their dark, diffuse tones were the result of legitimate processes, and had the effect of reducing images to a mixture of composition and atmosphere, thus invoking the imagination.

Similar techniques were evident in Heinrich Kuhn's The Model (1904) and Arnold Genthe's Hands with Jade (1920). (California-based Genthe also photographed the French Quarter with his soft focus lens in the 1920s, with often magical results.)

And in Rose Petals, among other contemporary images by Wendi Schneider, we find the same evocative pastel luminosity that so enlivened Monet's Water Lilies - evidence that impressionism, in this current, close-cropped form, is alive and well today.

A Review

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 04:19:22 -0600

By Edwin Howard, Memphis Business Journal, September, 1988

Wendi Schneider, a prize-winning New Orleans photographer who grew up in Memphis, is showing a number of intriguing black-and-white and painted photographs in the Theatre Memphis lobby starting the run of Kismet.

I particularly like her still-lifes, including the oil-tinted Calla Lilies and the charming Overture III, and her photos of sculpture and architectural detailing in London and Paris. Ram's Head, Royal Academy, London makes the ram come alive through an almost imperceptible blurring achieved by slight camera movement. And she captures the heartbeat of Paris in Notre Dame. in which modern building blocks are viewed over ancient cathedral gargoyles, wearing mourning veils as they await restoration.

She is also showing a number of photographs of enigmatic models in antique clothing, which might have been done for Vogue or Harper's Bazaar.

Schneider Stuns

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 04:17:33 -0600

By Fredric Koeppel, The Commercial Appeal, September, 1988

Wendi Schneider's photographs are stunning, bringing an air of ghostly slumber and decadence to the otherwise neutral lobby of Theatre Memphis. Art photography usually divides into two esthetic branches: the line that wants to record the world with such fidelity that the world itself seems other worldly (William Eggleston's work. for example), and the line seeking to create the world through suggestion, arrangement and manipulation. Ms. Schneider's evocative works fall into the second category.

A handful of the 23 photographs are black-and-white, but mainly the artist hand-paints her black-and-white prints with oil paint. Through this process she produces color of great subtlety and emotional range. Hers is not a spontaneous art but one of careful and timeless monumentality, lavish with shadow, imperturbable as icons.

Her studies of calla lilies begin not with those flowers growing outside or clustered in a vase. Rather, they consist of one lily, photographed in black-and-white and hand-colored, that in her image exudes the waxy stately essence of the blossom, not a calla lily but the calla lily.

Many of Ms. Schneider's images involve beautiful women in dreamy solitude, meditative and catlike in the comfort of their bodies draped with rich fabrics. Particularly evocative are Bliss, one of the simplest in composition but rich in suggestion, and Pink Lace. A 13-year resident of New Orleans (her parents live in Germantown), the artist has provocatively captured some of the bittersweet sensuality of the Crescent City in these images.

The most startling photograph in the show, Musee d 'Orsay, depicts the statue of a screaming helmeted warrior. Meticulous hand-painting gives it the appearance of a 19th century lithograph. As a work of art, it is beautiful; as a subject, it is profoundly disturbing. especially because of the contrast between the subject and its esthetic treatment.

A Delicate Way with the Lens

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 03:57:52 -0600

Roger Green, The Times-Picayune, October 11, 1991

With ''mille-fleurs.'' a stunning exhibit of hand-tinted photos by Wendi Schneider, A Gallery For Fine Photography inaugurates its dramatically expanded new facility at 522 Royal St. The decision to open the facility with Schneider's photos was apt. since both the gallery and the pictures court popular taste while maintaining exacting standards.

As ''mille-fleurs'' suggests, Schneider's subjects are flowers, mostly of the botanical variety but sometimes also beautiful women. The subjects and her treatment of them - with delicacy. sensuousness and grace - makes the photographs fine-tuned expressions not just of a feminine but of a Southern feminine sensibility.

To create the photos. Schneider uses a 35mm format to produce black-and-white negatives, from which she prints images as large as 26 by 30 inches. Enlarging the images gives them a slightly grainy quality, the sensuousness of which is enhanced by applications of transparent color in luminous hues.

Some noteworthy pictures are Rose Petals, in which the pink petals of the title are spangled with drops of dew, and Callas III, in which the vertical ribs of the blossoms are visible. Perhaps the sexiest picture is the semi-abstract Dappled Roses II, in which blossoms and petals are patterned with checks of light in different intensities, filtered through a screen.

Schneider, a former Times-Picayune employee, moved in 1988 to New York. There, she found an appreciative audience for her art, and many commercial jobs. No starving artist, Schneider demonstrates the tenacity of Southern women in the commissions she obtained from book publishers, recording companies and other venues. among them Random House, Simon & Schuster, Sony (CBS) Records and Victoria magazine.

As Schneider balances art and the market, so A Gallery for Fine Photography has enjoyed remarkable success on Royal Street. Purveyor of first-rate classic and contemporary photographs, the gallery is a class act on a street filled with emporia hawking gewgaws.

And not only has A Gallery or Fine Photography survived - it is flourishing. The new facility, an 1830s townhouse encompassing some 7,000 square feet, is twice the size of the former facility at 1313 Royal St. The bigger premises include two large exhibition spaces, several private viewing rooms, spaces for packing and shipping and a guest apartment for visiting photographers.