Last Friday Colin Whitlow (UVA Aunspaugh Fellow in the McIntire Department of Art) had an opening for his new photo-comic "Lavender and Other Colors" at New Art Across The Bridge here in Charlottesville. I'd never been to the space before, but a year ago I had heard a rumor that an art-friendly businessman owned the building and was willing to rent it out for shows. I'm not sure if that's the deal here - the space was kind of raw, but nice.
Whitlow's work is a comic done with photos instead of drawings, a longtime way of working used everywhere from Euro-art comics to Cracked Magazine. Whitlow in his press release tries to distance himself from comics, calling it a "stylized storyboard" and emphasizing his interest in film. At the show he had framed pages from the work up (all inkjet prints since it was assembled in the computer) and in a back room a documentary about comics and their history.
From his website:
The project’s plot revolves around Wyatt, a young man, who is going through the process of leaving his home in a small, rural town and adapting to the “real world” once he heads off to college. He is forced to reluctantly look at the parallels between the life he has been leading and that which he has always looked toward. The screenplay also focuses on Wyatt’s parents, who find themselves forced into confronting the problems within their marriage and careers after having distracted themselves with raising their son through early life. Throughout the plot’s exploration of what become fairly heavy issues, it maintains a positive, humorous, and even, at times, metaphysical tone.
Whitlow's work, and presentation of it, are professional and well-made. He seems to have taken his role as "Director" seriously, and the work looks thoughtful and carefully constructed. I didn't see a finished piece around so I couldn't read the whole book, but the pages on the wall were good to look at. The only problem was that they were photocomics...
Photocomics are generally not very good. They feel like Frankensteins - the detail oriented photos mashed with the very abstract language of comics. More importantly, when one is drawing a comic one can choose what to emphasize, what to leave out etc, allowing much more control in what the reader sees. In photo-comics, not matter how planned out and careful the lighting and scenery is, the level of detail gets distracting. A lamp in the background that might be a few brushstrokes in a drawn piece is a detail-laden, visually-heavy object in a photocomic. This problem doesn't affect motion-photos like film or TV as much because everything is moving all the time - photocomics feel like that moment at the end of a TV show when they freeze-frame the actors laughing.
Whitlow's work falls prey to this problem, so much so that it's hard to read - or rather hard to slow down and actually read it instead of flying through it. Wordless panels that contain important action are difficult to concentrate on - one is used to reading the word balloons quickly and starts to slide right over the "quiet" moments. Again, as a film he wouldn't face this problem, and the work "reads" a lot better when one thinks of it the way he apparently did - not as comics but at a beefed up storyboard. He also wisely kept the backgrounds simple and spare to minimize visual static, making the best of a difficult form.
Whitlow will have copies of the complete work for sale later this month and will be touring Charlottesville with it in May, details on his website.
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