| San
Francisco Bay Guardian
BURNING
MAN, Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, North Carolina's Outer Banks - what's the link here?
Actually, these places don't have anything in common except that they're all featured
in Barbara Traub's quirky and creative photographs. A San Francisco resident,
Traub has been documenting Burning Man since its inception (her photographs were
prominently featured in Hardwired's 1997 book on the festival), and some of her
most dramatic shots come from the desert event. The skeletal Man casts his shadow
across white sands, peaks of makeshift tents form a surreal mountainscape, and
( in the show's single color image ) a group of bathers caked in blue gray mud
plays in and around a desert hot spring. Going farther afield, Traub has captured
a few weird and wonderful moments in the global scheme of things, such as the
mystical "perspiring column" at the Hagia Sophia (there's also a shimmering image
of a swimmer in the Outer Banks). Coming back to home ground, she has also lovingly
documented some of the Bay Area's quirkier elements- from members of the San Francisco
Cacophony Society leading a "happening" in an Oakland storm drain to ArtCar
activist Harrod Blank standing in front of his well-known camera van, framed by
a halo of Instamatics. What pulls the whole thing together is the photographer's
visual style, in which surreal elements and a dramatic sense of composition unite
to form images that are offbeat, inventive, and just a little trippy. ADD Magnum,
through Dec. 29, Sat., noon-2 p.m. (or by appointment), 1252 Valencia, S.F. (415)
826-2858. (Sarah Coleman) |
