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A show currently on display at Maude Kerns Arts Center explores what happens when a documentary medium like photography ventures into murkier territory.
Yes, it is a photo of paper bags in a box.
But for the photographer Photax, who selected this work by Dan Lenore for an exhibit at the Maude Kerns Art Center, it’s much more than that.
Its lines, lighting, composition — the placement of the bags making them more of a geometric shape than recognizable object — made it a natural fit for an exploration of what it means to photograph something.
“It’s a box of paper bags,” Photax said. “And yet, when I saw that one when I was walking through Dan Lenore’s stuff, it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh. This is the most incredible photo.’”
Photax is not the real name of the Eugene photographer, but instead a pseudonym he’s adopted to separate his personal and professional life with his artistic output. He is one of four photographers in an exhibit at the Maude Kerns Art Center, fittingly titled “Four Photographers in Search of Abstraction,” and one of two presenting his work under a false name.
The four photographers have known each other for decades. (Lookout has confirmed their identities, but is not disclosing them to follow their wishes.)
That work, on show through July 25, is a tour of a friendly debate between Photax, Lenore and the photographers Gary Tepfer and Marc Thibaut, all at least 70 years old. Each photographer’s work is their argument in an extended dialogue that has lasted for decades, through the advent of digital photography and, for one, past their death.
Maintaining ties through photography
Marc Thibaut’s work takes one step beyond the actual photographs being abstract. Instead, his work plays with the idea of a photography exhibit itself. His contributions aren’t photos on the wall, but instead a table of printed out photo books.
They feature writings from two intellectuals on the history of abstract photography; both have the initials M.T., betraying that the whole book was written by Thibaut. (Thibaut is also a false name). Though he is not French, and in fact grew up in Eugene, he is now retired and living in France.
Connections between the photographers were upheld across a continental divide, in part thanks to an email thread started by Lenore sharing a “Picture of the Day,” which went out to an email list of fans and friends.
That daily prompt led to “a wonderful process” for Photax, who started carrying around a handheld digital camera to snap photos in passing, lending itself more to spontaneous bouts of inspiration from the surrounding world than the careful consideration of film photography.
Much of Photax’s abstract work in the exhibit is from these digital bouts, like one shot of ice on a car window, or a detailed shot of where the stem and blade of a leaf begin to meet.
Lenore died in 2024, making the exhibit of the four photographers’ work an informal memorial for one. “I just wish that he were alive so that he could have seen it, because he would have been quite delighted and thrilled by it,” Thibaut said of the exhibit.
Lenore’s work in the exhibition was selected by Photax, who went to Lenore’s Connecticut home to pore through photographs for pieces to include. Some works, like the paper bags or one of thin foam packing sheets atop a lightbox, were immediate picks.
But when it comes to describing what makes that work and the rest in the exhibit compelling, or fitting for an exhibit on abstraction, it’s more instinctual. He referred to the instinctual response to a good photo as a “pitter-patter” in the heart, how a professor of his phrased it long ago.
Though all the photos spark the pitter-patter, how they do it — and how they relate to “abstraction” — is in the eye of the beholder.
“An exhibit like this, you can kind of peel away this layer, you would imagine, and you see another layer and another layer peeling away,” he said. “Each time you peel it away, it’s something different.”
How to see it
The “Four Photographers in Search of Abstraction” exhibit is at Maude Kerns Art Center, 1910 E. 15th Ave., Eugene, now through July 25. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday.