Of Time and Place

The natural world, alive, turbulent; calm, roasting, and dead. Jason Frank Rothenberg shoots what he finds, mostly landscapes. This is a mini-retrospective, five years worth of color work. The most powerful images depict nature's inviolable power up close: a glacier, erratically coated with dirt, smothers a stream, which resembles a road. Where the two meet there's a maw, like the mouth of a cave. More brutal than majestic (and a terrific backdrop for the last act of Hamlet). In "Ocean", the heaviest print in the show, the waves heave and crash, black storm clouds hover overhead, and a squall disrupts the background. One doesn't talk back to the elements.
The vistas of trees and open spaces are tranquil, affectionate and a little odd, given their neighbors. Vegetation in Texas comes off better, if for the juxtaposition of the dead, broken branches, shed, golden leaves and living, unlandscaped grasses. A subtle tumult.
Rothenberg is a (primarily) commercial photographer in the Art + Commerce vein. He should get out more.

Jason Frank Rothenberg, "Fossils", at Werkstätte
55 Great Jones St.
212-228-2996
through Jan. 24
www.werkstattegallery.com/index.php?mode=home

images, from top:

"Glacier II", 2006
C-Print
42 1/2 x 36 1/2 inches, framed
edition of 5

"Ocean", 2003
C-Print
26 x 26 inches, framed
Edition of 5