A cursory glance at the images featured in the upcoming “Revealing Place” exhibition at Bingham Gallery is enough to kick you 80 years into the past.
Whether it’s the portrait of a small town preacher brooding in a pew, the image of a forlorn man perched on his soon-to-be-demolished porch or the snapshot of a road leading into an abyss, the images, though with differing subject matter, immediately bring to mind Depression-era photography.
Revealing Place is the product of a documentary photography course developed by Joseph Vitone, a professor at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas. After his inaugural course’s work was picked up by the Smithsonian, Vitone came up with the idea of having the course taught simultaneously at multiple locales.
Joseph and his son Dylan Vitone, an associate design professor at Carnegie Mellon University, invited Joe Johnson, an assistant professor in MU’s Art Department, to teach the course with them.
“It was almost like an updated Farm Security Administration photography project,” Johnson said. “You can’t send a college photography student to the four corners of the country. You can just teach the class in several different locations.”
The course was offered last fall, and 13 of MU’s art photography and photojournalism students took part. Each was assigned to find a subject relating to American life that could be photographed over the course of the semester. Junior Drew Nikonowicz chose the subject of subterranean business.
“I was really excited when I began,” Nikonowicz says. “But I was also really nervous. I was making these really sort of useless pictures on the outside of quarries, and then I discovered this quarry in Columbia. They had this underground space I had never gotten into, and it piqued my interest.”
Nikonowicz ended up photographing underground facilities in Columbia, Kansas City and St. Louis to create a series of 10 black-and-white photos that showcase the gritty reality of working and doing business underground.
Graduate photography student Matt Rahner chose to document the plight of 72 Kansas City residents being forced from their homes due to eminent domain. While visiting his sister, Rahner noticed a news story about the city voting to remove the residents to make room for a new police station.
“I wondered if this police station they were building was really going to help,” Rahner said. “It really grabbed my attention, and it fit well with the subject of the course.”
In one of the 10 photos about the neighborhood, a man who was photographed on the day he was forced to move out sits on the porch of his grandparents’ home. Rahner says the man was murdered in mid-August.
Following the conclusion of the course, student work was compiled from all three universities and prepared for exhibition. Revealing Place was shown at Pittsburgh Filmmakers from Jan.18 – March 17 and will be featured at the Bingham Gallery from Sept. 2 – 6 before going on to the St. Edward’s Fine Arts Gallery from Oct. 25 – Nov. 8.
The exhibition has also been accepted by the Smithsonian and is being reviewed for possible display.
Johnson says he is happy with the individual artwork being displayed, along with the project as a whole.
“It was great to be included with these amazing artists (Joseph and Dylan Vitone),” Johnson said. “I’m also very proud of how our Mizzou students brought it. The work from all three universities is very impressive.”
