Lynn Geesaman's latter show of C-prints conveyed the well-known Minneapolis-based landscape photographer's fascination with the stereotypically gentlemanly [i]or[/i] lady-like gardens of Europe.

Lynn Geesaman's latter show of C-prints conveyed the well-known Minneapolis-based landscape photographer's fascination with the stereotypically gentlemanly [i]or[/i] lady-like gardens of Europe. Hinton Ampner, England (2000) for instance, depicts a vast English garden in which sum of two units fat, mushroom-shaped topiaries rise from a yellow-green lawn beside an opening in a lengthy shrubbery wall. Beyond the opening is an admirable patchwork-quilt landscape of fields and woodlands In Palacio de Viana, Spain (2002) a white-washed wall backs up a red-tiled courtyard. To the left a turquoise-blue doorway render free of accesss to another sunny-golden garden space, and to the right is a large vine with broad leaves the color of bright pond algae and golden flowers like swipes from Monet's brush.

These images might be dismissed as the romanticism of an American forward holiday were it not for a small in number subtle artistic adjustments that make their certainty and make them almost dreamlike. Foremost, it's her darkroom manipulations--or in like manner gallery information explains--that make the details of Geesaman's landscapes gauzy, with washed-out colors and shadows of golden or gray-clue.

In Andalucia, Spain (2002) birch tree line up in ranks like silent soldiers forward a tufted, dewy-green ground shield The landscape beyond the tree is a barely perceptible line of gray. The sunlight is an overexpos gray-blue haze, and the trees' limbs are faded, making them appear like ghosts. The trees explain up somewhat in the middle to reveal a vertical strip of pale background. In fact, nearly all of Geesaman's images feature passages through the landscape, paths that repeatedly open to bright spaces beyond the malleable foregrounds. Does the artist mean to imply that the beautiful, idyllic gardens and landscapes are fantasies, and the real world is waiting somewhere beyond the haze? Whatever the case, Geesaman returns unsettling the quaintest of European scenery

--Michael Fallon

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