“The pandemic was the occasion, and Bach’s partitas a source of inspiration, when Gary Anthes began to photograph still lifes in an abandoned structure on his property. “Partita Rustica — Life and Death in a Virginia Barn” are studies of objects placed before rough-grained wooden backdrops and illuminated, starkly but splendidly, by natural light. The sun plays a crucial, if entirely offstage, role in the Studio Gallery show.
Water Lilies, Gary Anthes, 2021, Photograph, 10.5” x 16", $325
While a wrench, a scythe and a mound of barbed wire are among Anthes’s subjects, most of the posed items are natural and many of them — as the show’s subtitle notes — are dead. Carcasses of birds and a small rabbit lie next to flower arrangements in lyrical funerary arrays, and a diptych shows the withering of dogweed leaves over just two days. In one somber composition, a pair of pumpkins, long past putrefaction, approach fossilization.
The inevitability of death is a venerable artistic theme, underscored here by the fact that these pictures were made as millions died of covid. But there’s vitality as well in Anthes’s photos, some of which feature leaves and sprigs in fecund shades of green. The only things brighter are the broad planes and narrow shafts of light that enter the shadowy barn, testifying to the heat, glare and life that persist outside.”
Review by Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, September 2022. Thank you!
Sycamore Bark, Gary Anthes, 2022, Photograph, 10.5” x 16", $325