Utilitarian architecture, German-influenced typologies, Grumpy
Old Men, and a tedious trend in contemporary photography all pop up
in Scott Peterman’s minimal and reserved photographs of New England ice
fishing shacks at Charles Hartman this month. (Some of these allusions
surface more obliquely than others; it’s just hard for many of us to
see a shack on a frozen lake and not immediately hear Walter Matthau
mutter “Hi, Dickhead.”)
Peterman shoots his shanties with great reserve, photographing them
from afar—the length of a city block, on average—so that
they appear like tiny mirages or apparitions in the tundra. Where many
photographers would nose their way inside the shacks, Peterman hangs
back, almost like a nature photographer, cataloging these anonymous
huts with his lens, and moving on. This approach makes the pictures
less anthropological—we can’t see if there are girly pictures on
the wall or beer cans piled inside—and instead transports the
images to the realm of metaphor.
And indeed, these structures read clearly as elegies to loneliness
and isolation, each makeshift shack an island unto itself in an
unforgiving expanse of snow and ice. They each have their distinctive
features, but ultimately, they’re alone when the sun goes down, as
existentially distinct as a Giacometti sculpture.
The gallery here does a fine job of pushing this reading with a
careful selection of Peterman’s work. For the most part, they eschewed
his most literal images and focused instead on the instances in which
the shacks border on pure abstraction. Several are hardly recognizable
as photographs, looking more like Minimalist drawings on huge white
sheets of paper.
But aside from a few minor flourishes, mostly here thanks to the
gallery’s curation, it’s hard not to see Peterman’s work as one of
countless predetermined photo series littering the current scene. In
these series, the artists determine their narrow project and
subject—the insides of psychiatrists’ offices, portraits of mall
security guards, still lifes of discarded hospital bouquets,
etc.—before ever leaving the house, and then set out mundanely to
execute their preconceived goal. This approach to photography, aside
from becoming mind-numbingly ubiquitous these days, dramatically
nullifies the photographer’s opportunity for discovery and
improvisation—two of the most indispensable tools in any artist’s
arsenal.