Craig Pozzi at Basil Hallward Gallery, Powell's City of Books - Portland Ore - Brief Article

Craig Pozzi has created several major series of color photographs that are at once fascinating and funny. "Popular Events" documents local festivals in the hamlets of the western United States, "Looking for Mexico" probes clashing cultures in gringo resorts and border towns, and the deeply ironic "American Mall" celebrates suburban shopping. For this exhibition, Pozzi culled 20 color images from two decades of work. The subjects of all the photographs he chose were animals: birds, dogs, horses and more unusual species. Pozzi recognizes the risk of making cute or mawkish images when photographing animals. In an artist's statement for this show, he recommended Garry Winogrand's suite "The Animals" (1969), Barbara Norfleet's "Manscape with Beasts" (1984-88) and James Balog's "Survivors" (1988-89) as successful examples of the genre, but Pozzi's own work differs from these projects devoted to a day at the zoo or to endangered wildlife. His creatures are entirely subsumed in ordinary, day-to-day human activities and environments.

In Charleston, Oregon (1985), a dog stands alert at the prow of a docked fishing boat. From a low viewpoint, Pozzi frames him against the sky between the soaring masts and rigging of two vessels. The mongrel becomes monumental, a ship's figure-head. Pozzi's compositional mastery belies his instantaneous working method in which nothing is staged, only observed and deftly captured.

Other images bask in incongruity, as when a hulking elk lounges in a wicker chaise at what might be a company picnic. People in the picture ignore the beast, except for a pink-clad toddler who studies it at close range. In Riverton, Utah (1978), a heifer stares into the camera from the oil-stained driveway of a suburban tract house. How the cow got there we'll never know, but what's clear is Pozzi's delight in the way the cow's brown-and-white coat seems color-coordinated with the two-toned panels of the garage doors visible in the shot.

Burdened by the roles they must play in a world dominated by human beings. Pozzi's brutes adapt with equanimity. Invariably, it's the situation more than the animal itself that intrigues this photographer--a snake in a swimming pool, a camel or pig on a leash. He titled the exhibition "Living with Humans," aligning himself empathetically with his subjects. This empathy, together with his sensitive humor, allows Pozzi to perfectly convey how animals maintain their intractable otherness while negotiating an essentially alien realm.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group