The Journal

Media Credit: Kholood Eid Edward Staples, a senior public relations major, and Anthony LoRusso, a sophomore international relations major, take in the work of visiting photographer Gunther Cartwright on Friday, Nov. 6 at the May Gallery in the Sverdrup building. Cartwright's Industrial Blues series will be showcased in the gallery through Nov. 25.

Gunther Cartwright, photographer and professor of photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology, defines himself as a formalist by structuring the elements of an image and making all forms interact before taking a photograph.

"My definition of a formalist is a person who, as an artist, structures every facet of the image," said Cartwright at the May Gallery's opening reception Nov. 6. "I crop the image in my mind before taking a photograph. I'm a formalist and a modernist in terms of composing a photograph at the time of capture."

Dominique Macaire, an adjunct faculty member in media communications at Webster University, said Cartwright's work was impressive. However, his type of photography required a certain taste in color in order to be appreciated.

"His photographs are complex and interesting," Macaire said. "He looks into relationships in colors, planes, textures and sharpness. There's texture everywhere, interplay of lines, vectors are sometimes converging, yet at times diverging as well."
Cartwright pre-visualizes the content of his photographs before obtaining the final product. As opposed to commercial photography, where it's likely an image may be modified after being captured, Cartwright prefers to have a sense of what the photograph will look like before capturing an image. He observes a stage or place, then imagines what the image will look like when printed.

Cartwright's photographs don't seek to portray political or social statements against industries, but to explore the relationships between aesthetic elements found in industrial settings.

"My work isn't a statement about a state of mind, it's a statement of color," Cartwright said. "Some people see industries as our enemies, but I don't. I find them interesting."

As a child, Cartwright was always drawn to oil refineries and colored structures, man-made industrial structures, instead of landscapes. Since then, he has taken advantage of any industrial structure that may seem mundane at first by converting the image into an abstract composition.

"When you travel and look around, the world, in a sense, looks kind of gray and monochromatic," Cartwright said. "But if you stop your car, get a little closer and observe, you'll perceive interesting structures and colors that people see all the time and don't pay attention to."

Paola Barriga, a senior public relations major, said she liked both Cartwright's lecture and the opening reception. Despite Barriga's preference for portrait photography, she admired Cartwright's ability to find interesting abstract images in mundane places.

"I very much enjoyed the contrast between colors and textures," Barriga said. "The way the photographs are framed captured my attention to observe a little further and enjoy the forms simple objects can create."
Cartwright was an artist of residency at WU this fall. His original idea was to take photographs of industries while being in St. Louis to later display in the May Gallery. However, many companies denied him access to take photographs.

"Companies are very nervous about having people take photos of factories," Cartwright said. "Despite the support I received from (a few faculty members from WU), I was denied access to these places. Much of my work involves months of negotiation in order to receive permission to take photographs."
Cartwright said despite the many months of negotiation some of his photographs required, they paid off very well once he got access to these places.

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