Review

"Of Ants and Aphids," Archival Photographic Print.

Robert Gaines

7 a.m.-6 p.m.

Dunn Bros. Coffee
8975 Metcalf
Overland Park, KS
913.381.3030

Hours: 6 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Friday, 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, 7 a.m.-7 p.m Sunday
Runs through: Jan. 31.

Artist's site: http://www.showmephotography.net
Gallery site: http://www.dunnbros.com/locate_results.asp?location_id=69

Robert Gaines' photographic taste covers a wide range of subjects: flora, fauna, scenery, art, artifact and more.

It also covers a wide range of ranges.

In his shared show at Dunn Bros. Coffee (the other artist is his wife, Lanna), Gaines offers close-ups and panoramic shots, scientific precision and decontextualized abstraction. For every photograph like Of Ants and Aphids, today's featured piece, there's one of, say, river mud that looks like a painting.

It's not that he can't make up his mind. It's that he doesn't see a need to.

Photographically I am a hunter-gatherer, not a farmer; a generalist, not a specialist, Gaines writes. I love to hunt in deserts, prairies, abandoned buildings, city streets, crowded and isolated places and spaces. I'm omnivorous; my quarry may be a bug, a bird, a building, or even a crack in the sidewalk. My images are mostly opportunistic, occasionally serendipitous, I strive to see something differently, capture and share it.

In doing so, Gaines often pulls off the nice trick of making his photographs as much about ... well, since he went with a food metaphor, as much about the side dishes as the entrée.

In Of Ants and Aphids, for example, the eye might start with the titular insects (especially the aphids, which are smaller and so require some active seeking out). But the real star of the photograph is that red-and-green leaf in the center. (Red will not be ignored.)

There's a good deal of theory at work in that shot, and a good deal of intuition as well. For Gaines, it's about getting the two aspects of creation to work and play together. As he puts it:

The science is having the right technology, the knowledge to use it and being at the right place at the right time. The art is seeing and capturing the vision.  As long as I have food to eat, good health, the earth to wander, light behind the eyes to see by, and some sort of camera, it's all one to me.

From any range, that's an excellent view to have ... and to share.

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