By CAC

In his photo series, Private Life, David Rosenthal's images appear to be real-life scenes, but closer examination shows they've been manipulated.

It's a blurred memory of a dark passageway. It's the discarded family photo and the lens-flare obscuring dad's features. The face of an anonymous soldier found in a used pocketbook which, upon closer inspection, is nothing more than the face of a plastic toy soldier. It's a woman's nude figure, rainbowed by body paint, distorted in a fun house mirror, her carnival glass curves.

During an annual review of gallery proposals for the Weston Art Gallery at the Aronoff Center, director Dennis Harrington took a closer look at a few photography submissions. From the clean white glow of a slide table he glimpsed a new interpretation of reality.

"We tend to think of the origins of photography as being documentation of real things but ultimately all photography is altered reality," Harrington says.

From these photographers' slides he began to construct a group show. He sought the expertise of Dennis Kiel, associate curator of prints, drawings and photographs at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Together they drafted a final list of 12 photographers to be featured in the Weston's new exhibit Altered States. The show is sponsored by the law firm, Dinsmore & Shohl; Antoinette LaBoiteaux; and Tom Schiff/Lightborne Video. (Schiff is also CityBeat's majority owner.)

"What's interesting about the show is that each artist has approached the idea of altered states in a different way. You could say they're doing the same things in terms of manipulation and subtle fabrication. By subtle fabrication I mean that if you didn't know the context of the show it might look like a straightforward photography exhibit," Kiel says.

David Rosenthal's "Private Life" series is a bizarre slice of life. An androgynous youth in baggy pants and stiletto heels looks out-of-place on the city street. Rosenthal's artist statement points out that his photography "is a mirror which too infrequently reflects a world which seems at times impossible to understand." Rosenthal's photos make you look twice before determining that he hasn't spontaneously captured a real-life scene. Like a director, he staged the female construction worker pole dancing on a scaffold.

"It looks like it could have happened, but it didn't," Kiel says, pointing to the provocative construction worker. "There's this whole idea that photography is real and true but really the photographer has a lot of control over what we see."

Kim Burleigh exercises a different kind of control by constructing turbulence patterns. Above a bleak Cincinnati skyline, swirls of toxic color pollute the city. Burleigh uses an old technique called a photogram and a 3-D computer program to create digital turbulence patterns.

"Photographers are responding to the technological advances that are available to them today to move beyond the constraints of the dark room," says Harrington. While artists use digital photography and computer editing in their work, traditional photographic methods can produce innovative concepts.

Shawn Scully proves that some photographic techniques are old but not antiquated. His series of G.I. Joe knock-off dolls are hand-painted gelatin prints. The 20 portraits are larger than life and haunting, with rosy cheeks, and vacant eyes.

Photographer Jymi Bolden (whose work is familiar to CityBeat readers) also uses traditional methods. His color photographs are a maze of mirrors that dizzy the eye and redefine trompe l'oeil. Rather than altering his images digitally or hand-painting his prints, Bolden paints his models before he photographs them. Then he uses his manual camera to photograph the distorted figures he sees through the looking glass.

Nancy Rexroth's images are grainy and soft like chalk drawings. Rexroth used an inexpensive, low-resolution digital camera to shoot the interior of a family home.

Kiel hovers over a tiny slide of the "Bookcase," and says, "It has a real painterly feel to it. Some of the photos are so stark; you're just looking at the forms and shapes. The lights and darks are really what hold it together," he notes. Like a Georges Seurat painting, Rexroth's dark hallways, flooding white windows and richly colored walls are impressionistic.

Diana Duncan Holmes uses traditional subject matter to convey non-traditional ideas. In her "American Dream: 21st Century" series she photographs babies and houses, which she sees as manifestations of the American dream. Using techniques of collage, painting and copying, she changes the meaning of the images.

"Babies become essences -- somewhat mythical and metamorphosed into creatures of my imagination, printed larger than life to further point the way," she writes in her artist statement. Yet they do not stray from the American Dream and under the context of this title is a commentary on the present time.

Juxtaposition of images can alter how we read into a picture. Guennadi Maslov places two photos -- one large and the other small -- together in a frame. A black-and-white photo shows a large man with his back to the camera revealing an American flag and a swastika patch on the back of his vest. Below him is a smaller photo of a Muslim woman in a traditional hijab scarf.

"He's directing how he wants you to think about these images," says Kiel.

Harrington and Kiel contributed the final directorial touch when they mapped out how to hang the show. Like architects they pored over a model of the gallery, exploring every possible arrangement. Now they sit in the gallery's crowded office, walls covered with relics of past shows, and shoot the breeze like old pals. They flip through a fresh stack of postcards for Altered States.

"I'm looking forward to the overall reaction as people are hit with this array of photographs," says Kiel.