Exhibit shines a light on what photography really means

Photography, in the digital age, has become a surprisingly simple business for amateurs: point, click, upload on computer ... and send to distant friends or relatives.

But the dozen works in "Outta My Light!" — now on display at the Henry Art Gallery — emphasize that photography can be a lot more complicated than that, depending on the photographer's tools and intentions.

As guest curator Bridget Nowlin points out in her introduction to the exhibit, "Only two components tie all images together in this unique art form: light and time. One does not need a camera, paper, chemicals, or a lens to create a photographic image, but without light, there can be no photography (literally 'light-writing'). ... The same is true for time, for without the time involved in an exposure, there would be no final image."

The show is drawn mostly from the Henry's Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection; the Monsens are longtime Seattle photography enthusiasts who have donated much of their prize collection to the museum. It spans the entire range of the medium's history, from the 1840s to the present.

I had a chance to walk with Rowlin through the exhibit as she pointed out what sparked her interest about the selections she made. The idea, she says, wasn't to do a historical overview, but to examine how photography is "more than one medium." If you're curious about the methods behind photogravure, albumen printing vs. carbon printing, or the hazards of using wet collodion negatives, this exhibit is for you.

Here are a few we looked at:

"Trichomanes Radians (Common Maidenhair Fern)" by Anna Atkins (1843). The steps behind this "photogram" are simplicity itself. Place a plant specimen on paper. Cover it in glass to keep it flat. Then expose it to sunlight. But for how long? "It just depends on the sensitivity of the paper," Nowlin says. "And also it depends on the amount of light. Here in Seattle we have a lot of clouds, so sometimes the exposure can be a couple of minutes long. But if you have a sunny day, it can be a couple of seconds long. Atkins was working in England ... so I imagine it was a little bit longer. These were scientific studies she was doing." The potassium ferricyanide with which the paper was treated gives this pale plant silhouette its blue background color.

"Forêt de Fontainebleau" by William Drooke Harrison (circa 1865). Nowlin chose two prints from the same negative to illustrate a point about albumen prints vs. carbon prints. The image is of a male figure peering into in a sylvan scene — but the albumen print has a yellowing glow to it, while the carbon print is all sharp, shadowy blacks. "This is really a perfect example of the different qualities one can get," Nowlin says. "The artists can choose how they want to express the final print." The carbon print is much more stable. The albumen print would continue to yellow, she says, "if not properly cared for."

"Gathering" by Robert ParkeHarrison and Shana ParkeHarrison (1994). This mixed-media work ("Painting is certainly one component," Nowlin points out) has a lot going on in it. But its starting point was a photograph of Robert ParkeHarrison, in suit and tie, seemingly holding up a wild assemblage of junk — chairs, a handsaw, a rake, a lamp. The husband-and-wife team then worked through "a lot of different processes," Nowlin says, to get from the initial negative to the large-scale end result. The print, mounted on wood paneling, has "a lot of texture to it, and that's from the beeswax that's then put on as the final layer of the work."

Also featured: iconic work by Margaret Bourke-White, Imogen Cunningham and Seattle up-and-comer Isaac Layman.