Marcy Robinson: Half-Frame

In Half-Frame, Marcy Robinson transforms simple objects into awe-inspiring forces. A rare half-frame camera discovered in a closet during Robinson's teen years inspired the title. The instrument, originally her grandfather's, uses only half the area of a 35-millimeter frame. Robinson exploits this to establish a unique viewpoint. She freezes the details of everyday scenes using plays on light and proportion that make photos, beds, window shades, traffic cones, chandeliers, paintings, grassy knolls and trees appear larger than life, yet diminutive and fragile. She makes the ordinary extraordinary: a wooden telephone pole spears a cloudy blue sky, a ghostly rectangle of dirt crosses the sinking black lines of a gutted swimming pool, the face of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz peers out from a lone coffee mug standing before a window of dark iron bars; or tiny dead deer lies across the never-ending yellow lines of a highway. The disproportion of such tender objects against dark or vast scenery, like the deer stretched out on the infinite ribbon of the interstate, strikes the eye like a flame. This collection--never before seen--gives the viewer a unique gift: new eyes with which to gaze on our environment. The result is that neither the small nuances nor the intimate relationships they denote to the artist go unnoticed.