Archive

From the 2003 exhibition press release, Dance Lines: Photographs by Stuart Allen. Courtesy Crocker Art Museum.

Dance Lines is a series of black and white photographs made on-site in the Grand Ballroom of Sacramento, California’s Crocker Art Museum. Building on the artist’s previous investigations of time-based motion, Night Lines (1997 – 1998) and Studio Lines (2000 – 2001), Dance Lines documents the intricate movement of dancers as they perform before the camera.

Using a distinctly photographic device – the light trail produced by a moving light during a long exposure – the artist has recorded maps or diagrams of various dance forms on film.  Though not a dancer himself, Allen has worked with specialists in a variety of disciplines, from ballet to swing, to determine the most effective sequence of moves for each image.

For more information about this series, please click here for an essay by curator Scott Shields, and here for an essay by critic Meredith Goldsmith.

From the press release for the 2003 exhibition Light / Time / Motion. Courtesy Claremont Graduate University.

…Allen’s Light Bulbs series takes the photographic study of light directly to the source. These minimal compositions are contemplations of the nature of photography itself – its relationship to time, space, movement and light. By training his camera on the light source rather than reflected light from a secondary subject, Allen reduces the photographic act to a direct exchange between transmitter (bulb) and receiver (camera).

For more information about this series, please click here for an essay by David Robertson.

…In the series Studio Lines, Allen created light trails without an obvious external referent. Based on the dimensions and movement of the artist’s body, the patterns in the photographs act as a stand-in for the human form. The light lines are, in a sense, self-portraits, depicting the artist’s movement and presence, rather than his actual appearance. Images of spinning, bending, or gestural sweeps of the arm capitalize on photography’s ability to compress a span of time into one frame.

Adapted from a 2003 essay by Scott Shields.

For more information about this series click here for an artist’s statement.

Completed during a 1997-98 Artist in Bioregional Residency program in Northern California, Night Lines is a series of nocturnal landscape photographs informed by dynamic light trails. Made using traditional methods (long exposures) and simple tools (a variety of flashlights), the lines are drawn in response to features of the landscape. As the manipulator of the light, the artist himself becomes a primary component of the photographs–albeit an invisible one–as the images document Allen’s interaction with nature and the earth’s topography.

For more information about this series click here for an artist’s statement.