Nicole White – The Surround

Looking at Giorgione's famous Renaissance painting "The Tempest" notice that every detail – the architecture, the clouds, the trees, the bridge, and the river – are not decorative surrounding, but necessary narrative elements. The image cannot be divided this into figure / ground relationship; all is one. In painting, there is an inherent freedom to select what you depict, omitting unwanted details and emphasizing others. In photography, this freedom is limited to what is included or excluded within the frame.

Nicole White considers this photographic dilemma in her new work, The Surround. "If the figures and intended subjects of photographs were cut away, the mass of photography-the acreage of prints and slides and screens and posters and digital frames – would be comprised of overlooked, un-needed and unwanted details... the surround, which is often enough unwanted... is only noticed when it helps identify the place the photograph was taken, or when it adds a general atmosphere."¹ She focuses the attention of the viewer on the overlooked. Employing the technique of decontexualization, she emancipates herself from the camera's authority. The expected compositional reference points are absent, leaving the viewer to reconsider the photograph's purpose. These photographic fragments may disorient the viewer, but they simultaneously force the imagination and allow for contemplation of the world depicted and the photographic image from another perspective.

This decontexualization is mirrored through the exhibiting of artworks in a gallery space, the white cube. Her images are drawn out of context twofold: White extracts parts of the visual world via her photograph, and then in turn, the gallery extracts her work from her practice. The result is a highly focused, artificial view on reality.

NICOLE WHITE is a practicing artist, historian, and educator living in Chicago. She received a BFA in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art in 2002, a MA in Art History from the University of Connecticut in 2010, and a MFA in Studio from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2012. Nicole has exhibited work in Boston, New York, and Chicago. ArtExhibitionLink
www.artexhibitionlink.com

¹James Elkins, What Photography Is, 117