Shifting Moments.

Looking Through the Glass now on view at Manifest Gallery is another example of a show that explores the various and varying perspectives of an artist. Here, Tama Hochbaum explores this idea through composite digital photography. She makes her photographs of landscapes, trees, and magnolias by combining a series of shots taken of the subject in a gridded collage piecing together the scene. Hochbaum’s goal is not necessarily to recreate the scene exactly, but instead to call attention to the shifts in perspective.

The title of the show is a wonderfully fun play on the well known Lewis Carroll book during which Alice’s sense of reality is reversed. Hochbaum’s own reversal of the book title allows her to call on her viewer to look. The glass to which she refers is not a mirror but a window either implied or included in her pictures. It is this window I found most interesting in many of the works exhibited in this show.

While Hochbaum has included in her work windows typical to homes, the works in this show imply moving vehicles. Here, most of her pictures place the viewer in cars or planes. This seems to then emphasize the movement or shift of perspective. Furthermore, Hochbaum seems to double (or triple?) down on the mechanical nature of her work. Combined with the mechanics of digital photography and the grid composition, the vehicle adds to what seems to further emphasize the perspective shift; a celebration of moments caught.