Jeff Whetstone, "Post-Pleistocene"

Although not conceptually complex, Jeff Whetstone’s appealing new photographs take a look at various caverns and grottoes in Alabama and Tennessee that have been defaced by everyone from homeless wanderers to adventuresome local teenagers. Whetstone casts these painted caves as surreal environments, stage sets for a chronological compression of passing human activity. Through his eyes, we see the strange attraction, if not always beauty, of these contemporary palimpsests.

Light is the great arbiter of content in these shots. Because the areas Whetstone snaps are deep within the earth, the artist has to flood them with lighting brought in for the occasion. The exposures used to create the photos can take up to an hour. The effect is artificial and subtly bizarre, particularly in Mark’s Passage, where the initial impression is of a wall awash in natural light; a second look reveals an airlessness more characteristic of De Chirico’s paintings.

It is this unreal luminosity that lends punch to the images, which are otherwise historically interesting if a bit bland. Textural elements are pulled into play by the theatrical setup, including footsteps in the dusty ground, which look as indelible as prints on the surface of the moon. By contrast, such photos as Upper Room frame the stone undulations of the walls so beautifully they seem animated. Whetstone has hit on a gorgeous, if simple, visual device.