Solid buildings and ethereal people at Multiple Exposures; burned books and solitary figures at IA&A; nature in motion and under threat at Waverly Street
GRAND EDIFICES, OFTEN RECOGNIZABLE, FRAME EVERYDAY MOMENTS in "Capital Perspectives," an exhibition of 20 photographs by 12 members of Multiple Exposures Gallery. Sometimes the subjects are the structures themselves, as in Tom Sliter's "Cupola" or Van Pulley's "Dramatic Arts," both architectural interiors. (The latter photo gazes out a building's massive window at ... another building.) More often, however, there are people in the compositions, although they're usually dwarfed by their monumental surroundings and barely warmed by light.
Juried by Noe Todorovich, executive director of Exposed DC, the show is split equally between black-and-white and color pictures. But occasional splashes of red or orange just accentuate the generally muted palettes, as in Tim Hyde's "Snow Sisters," in which five cloaked figures navigate a near-whiteout in central Washington. For a frozen instant, the white-dusted pedestrians resemble historical statues of the sort common in nearby parks.
Several of the contributors render people as dark silhouettes, like the two conversationalists seated in an eatery in Pulley's "Face-to-Face." The other shadowy beings include a couple, one with a bicycle, in Alan Sislen's "Tidal Basin Reflections," and the two-museum goers of Soomin Ham's "While You Are Watching," who peer out another huge window from another notable recent D.C. building. In Fred Zafran's "Triangle," a solitary man is secondary to the title subject, a shaft of light. Mists nearly swallow such small figures as the lone nighttime Mall walker in Sandy LeBrun-Evans's "Lincoln Watch" and the workers swathed in steam in Eric Johnson's "Maine Avenue Fish Market."
Water and a lone person feature as well in one of the lighter-hearted pictures, Sarah Hood Salomon's image of a woman, wearing work clothes and clutching a briefcase, who hops past lawn sprinklers outside the U.S. Capitol. Equally witty is Sislen's study of the usually imposing Washington Monument, reduced to being just one of the guys amid a thicket of Smithsonian spires and turrets. The photo is, playfully, the show's only depiction of a crowd.
Through Jan. 5 at Multiple Exposures Gallery, Torpedo Factory, 105 N. Union St., Alexandria. multipleexposuresgallery.com; 703-683-2205.