James Casebere, Nevisain Underground #2, 2001

James Casebere, Yellow Hallway #2, 2001

James Casebere, Monticello #3, 2001

Picture Paradox

By Dan Tranberg

Photography has reached new heights in recent years, thanks both to an increase in available technology and to the talents of a generation of artists who are using it in ways not previously possible.

Among them is James Casebere, whose haunting exhibition, "Picture Show: James Casebere," opened last week at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, formerly the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art.

Casebere constructs tabletop architectural models using paper, plaster and Styrofoam and then photographs them. But rather than printing his images in the conventional way, in a darkroom, he scans them into a computer and prints them with a Lambda printer, an enormous, super-high-quality laser printer.

Using this process, Casebere has made photographs as large as 8 feet by 12 feet that are sumptuously rich and detailed. And he's not alone. Photographers including Andreas Gursky, Jeff Wall, Thomas Struth and Gregory Crewdson all use similar technology to make images that rival billboards and movie screens.

That's part of the idea. Unlike many art photographers, even those from the recent past, Casebere is more interested in the context of everyday life than he is in the insular world of fine-art galleries. He has even placed his work anonymously on the streets of New York City in order that it might be seen by a range of viewers.

But as much as Casebere is interacting with society, his work looks nothing like the art of social activists of the past. Rather than favoring easily digestible information, he creates subtle, dreamlike images that tap into deeply subconscious anxieties.

Many of Casebere's photographs look as though they were captured the day after a disaster, such as a flood or a nuclear explosion. There's no real indication of what exactly happened, but each image shows a room or hallway that is flooded with water or is stripped of its functionality. At the same time, each scene is strangely serene, often including the calming suggestion of sunlight streaming through a small window.

This use of paradox is at the core of Casebere's strength as an image-maker. Nothing is just one thing. His work is both beautiful and terrifying, both soothing and full of anxiety.

From another angle, Casebere is toying with an issue that has become a hot topic among contemporary photographers: the relationship between fact and fiction. While he obviously goes to great lengths to make his models realistic and to light them in a way that simulates reality, it remains clear when viewing his scenes that they are, indeed, models.

This is not a matter of failing to produce a believable illusion. It is part of the program. By allowing his models to retain some sense of artificiality, Casebere is acknowledging the essential artificiality of his medium, the fact that all photographs are constructions in some sense.

But in spite of the fact that the places you see in his work are models, on an emotional level Casebere's images are as real as any dream or visual impression. They trigger all kinds of thoughts and feelings, much in the same way that movies do.

The richness and believability of Casebere's scenes, as well as their emotional depth, is partially attributable to the artist's interest in history. A series of images that resemble prison cells, for example, was preceded by extended visits to actual prisons and extensive research into the history of the prison system.

The same is true of a series based on Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and another based on an academy in Massachusetts. Interviews with Casebere reveal that his thoughts about these places delve deeply into the social implications of the systems that created them.

As with all great art, the ideas contained within Casebere's work expand as you look at it. His photographs are not only big, gorgeous images that take advantage of cutting-edge technology, but also artful representations of big ideas.

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This article appeared in The Plain Dealer, December 13, 2002

© 2007 Dan Tranberg. All rights reserved.