Introductory remarks to catalog
I've known Tama Hochbaum for a long time and have had a chance to follow the trajectory of her artistic development. For a number of reasons, it seems fitting that she be the one to inaugurate the program in the room for paper. Tama came to photography from years of paint. Her concerns with painting led her to explore complex overlays, multiple perspectives and a luminous palette. The result was reminiscent of that unhinged moment in Italy when the breakthroughs of the late Renaissance were about to tip into mannerism, a transition that championed individuals. Her painting reminded me of the exaggerated foreshortening of Tintoretto and the florescent color of Pontormo--wild, but not bad company. When she switched to the camera, it seemed to have a grounding effect for her. She focused on her immediate family for subject matter and experimented with the low-tech constraints of pin hole photography, producing modest but haunting images. She had definitely found her medium. I couldn't go for a simple walk with her without having to stop every three minutes while she zoned in on another subject. For all the success of her new found passion, though, I found myself wondering what had happened to the proto-cubist preoccupations of her years of painting. The answer came when Tama discovered digital photography and the license of post-production. With her latest series of composite images, Tama has managed something most of us would like to achieve; she has reached back and pulled all the constituent chapters of her personal narrative into one integrated resolution. The inspector has gathered all the suspects in the drawing room and we finally get to find out who did it. Rather than fracturing the image, the multiplicity of approach in these photographs, with slight shifts in light, angle and scale, manages to serve a greater coalescence and clarity in motif. Her realization of her subjective view is crystalline, and is lent even greater universality in her series concentrating on the archetype of the lone tree. These works are rich, at once slowly revealing and yet immediately accessible. I feel fortunate to be able to show them in the room for paper. George Lawson, Director room for painting room for paper