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Juror Statement

Lisa Hostetler

The history of photography has always been the story of more than one technique. From the earliest days when Daguerre and Talbot simultaneously claimed the medium's invention, through the salted paper prints, glass negatives and albumen prints of the nineteenth century to gelatin silver and the plethora of twentieth- and twenty-first-century materials, photography has proved itself infinitely adaptable to new technologies. Rather than replacing one process with another, photographers simply widened their sphere to include new developments. But the concept of "light writing" conjured by the medium's name remains constant, whether that light is recorded with mineral salts or pixels. The photographers in this year's APG exhibition use a wide range of processes, but their approaches hold in common an enduring respect for photography's ability to reveal humanity to itself. Each artist does this with his or her own inflection, and with a kind of graceful candor.

The photographs of Jeremiah Ariaz and Vicki Hunt suggest that people and places are symbiotic systems that shape each other fundamentally. Focusing on one town in the Southwest, Ariaz glimpses the constant interlacing of the area's real and ideal landscape in the daily lives of its people. Hunt examines a wholly different environment in the rural South. Her photographs introduce us to personalities that seem both to recall and to shatter stereotypes simultaneously. Often the character of interactions among people or between people and animals says as much about a place as anything else.

With an astute eye for moments that illuminate such relationships, Willard Pate demonstrates that a good photographer's greatest asset is her talent for careful observation. In the photographs of Martin Battilana and Teresa Sims, objects become ciphers for human values. Battilana salvages abandoned toys with his camera and renders their images in platinum and palladium. Although some would consider his subjects common refuse unworthy of notice, precious metals seem an appropriate mantel for these cherished companions from childhood. Though the water towers in Sims's photographs broadcast their presence at a higher volume, they also refer beyond themselves, to the collective sense of community that distinguishes one town from its neighbors.

Finally, there is Lee Whittle, whose photographs function as mirrors more than windows, to use John Szarkowski's famous metaphor. I've long suspected that all photographs may be mirrors as much as they are windows, but Whittle constructs her photographic images such that their reflective aspect dominates. Looking in her mirrors, we are apt to see shadows of ourselves as well.
- Lisa Hostetler, Curator of Photographs, Milwaukee Art Museum