Vibrant Visions

By Doug Lebrun
Review of the photoshow 4 Visions at Furchgott-Sourdiffe Gallery, Shelburne, VT
Appeared in VOX March 4, 1998

David Carlson is represented in the exhibition by technically accomplished color photographs, mostly taken in the late afternoon and early evening light. Carlson's gaze is steadfastly upon the human world. By far the most interesting of Carlson's photographs are his images of children: odd, uncanny pictures that are somewhat reminiscent of Diane Arbus' work. In his "Clothesline, Whiting, VT," a crazily tilted clothesline pole divides the scene in half. To the left, a child in a red sweater stretches up and grasps the clothesline with both arms; he seems almost as if he was suspended from it and looks directly at the viewer with a disturbing, dispassionate gaze. To the right, a rose-colored curtain the same size as the child hangs from the line, but slightly buckled against the ground. Child and curtain have an eerie correspondence: one thing is a shroud, and one thing is visible yet remains somehow shrouded. The child is like a caryatid and the curtain is a fluted column, each holding up one end on an immense, cloud-tangled, late-afternoon sky.

In others of Carlson's photographs, similarly, children are caught in action at moments that are simply weird. In winter, a small child is captured hunched in mid-air against the night sky, jumping off of a large, freshly-sawn tree stump toward a field of deep snow, his face glowing in unnatural ecstasy. In summer, a boy is on a beachside swing set, looking over his shoulder at the viewer like a solid nugget of paranoid self-consciousness, while behind him a sexy woman in a swimsuit is silhouetted against a hazy, featureless lavender sky. These photographs of children are completely natural--not in any way contrived; their oddity derives purely from the madness that is an integral element of childhood, which Carlson captures with real skill.