REVIEW: JEFF ROWE

Night photography has traditionally been confined to a black canvas that is either streaked with the long exposure of passing lights or the outlines of strangely lit sites and figures. Flash photography, of course, has attempted just the opposite -- to dispel the shadows with bursts or flares of antiseptic brightness. Now comes Jeff Rowe who manages to takes us through and beyond both these familiars and into a separate realm in which the darkness has been painted with scintillating colors containing both forms and lines that seem to glow with their own particular type of radiation. The results can range from the painterly to the graphically abstract -- sometimes encompassed totally within a single frame -- but above all they persist with a warm elegance that bids us to witness the nighttime in a very fresh and original light.
Rowe’s darkness is a modern one, containing forms and shapes which reflect different volumes and textures that the day can only hint at. His landscapes encompass almost dreamlike vistas that are fired by disparate colors that cannot flourish in the sunlight. This is an entirely new terrain, absent all the old familiar shadows, or in which, just perhaps, we the viewers have become the fleeting shadows cast by this new light.

Roy Flukinger
Curator of Photography HRC Austin TX
© 2006