Museum exhibits Jacobson

Walking into the new Bill Jacobson exhibit is quite a disconcerting experience. While there is nothing overtly disturbing about the collection of hazy, yet intimate, photographs, the images impose a quiet unease upon the viewer.

The earliest of Jacobson's three series, "Interim Portraits," deals most directly with the loss and memory invoked by the AIDS generation, a theme he never abandons in later work, even if treated more subtly.

Utilizing a solely pristine white background, Jacobson's portraits never fully focus on their subjects, conjuring an unfinished and fading sensation. Though barely visible facial expressions sometimes reflect happiness, the overriding emotion is one of premature loss.

"Interim Portrait # 373," a close range head shot, portrays a man with his mouth half open, as if cut off in the middle of an idea he desperately needs to relay. The portraits continuously convey a sense of fading memory and increasing distance.

Courtesy of the University Museum of Art Bill Jacobson's haunting "Portrait # 373" is on display at the Museum of Art in its current exhibition of the artist's thoughts, portraits and songs.

Portraits "# 613" and "# 616," with sprawling uncomfortable angles, simultaneously suggest the stillness of death and the painful motion of falling.

The white backgrounds, while conveying the sterility of sickness and death, also function to remove the subjects from a realistic backdrop of pain to a more spiritual realm. Both techniques compliment each other to convey the idea that lives were snatched before they were completed.

The artist's second series, "The Songs of Sentient Beings" departs further from reality; black backgrounds illuminate incandescent figures that lack even the soft-focused reality present in "Interim Portraits." The figures lack external bodily characteristics, as they are reduced to the very essence of the human form.

Interestingly, "Sentient Beings" relays a more uplifting sentiment than do the "Interim Portraits." The increased animation of the figures' movements convey a renewed sense of weightlessness. But Jacobson does not completely abandon the connection to mortality. With "# 1092," a moaning face reminds the viewer that death and pain are ever-present.

If "Songs of Sentient Beings" is a departure from reality, Jacobson makes an attempt to return to it with "Thought Series." Adopting an even more intimate perspective, the photographer closes in on specific areas of the figure. Head shots are tighter, hands and torsos fill the entire frame; even the focus is crisper.

Included in this section are water images, unusual not only because of Jacobson's characteristic blurred treatment of his subject matter, but also for their lack of horizon or intruding objects. Whereas water traditionally appears as a backdrop for the subject of interest, Jacobson's lake images emphasize the water itself as a subject, linking nature to the series' reflective figures.

As a photographer, Jacobson's treatment of the figure is innovative and unique. In a broader artistic sense, the medium is an appropriate choice for his themes. The world of photographic art often presents crisp and realistic images, so when Jacobson blurs the lines of recognizably real subjects, the viewer may struggle to grasp the meaning. In this way, the photographs function to mimic the process of straining to retain the memories of lost moments.

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