Visual Chronicles: Unveiling Narratives Through Art

Recently, Sullivan Goss commemorated its 40th anniversary, highlighting a distinguished and significant existence as a vital West Coast gallery. From its dependable position on Anapamu, which was initiated by Patricia Sullivan Goss and her spouse, Frank Goss — initially with a charming café — and currently managed by owner Nathan Vonk, the gallery has established itself as an essential cultural entity and a paradigm of how to “gallery” (when used as a verb).

While its essential art forms and cadre of talented artists center around traditional forms of painting and sculpture, photography is now enjoying a showcase in this space, a first in almost two decades. Appropriately, the exhibition celebrating the impact of photography offers a friendly and widely encompassing survey rather than a sharply concentrated presentation.

Welcome to the photography realm of Los Angeles collector and dealer Peter Fetterman, whose extensive collection provides the foundation for this show. Instead of venturing into the more abstract or obscure aspects of the medium, this amiable and historically rich selection primarily engages with human and celebrity landscapes, often relishing in candid moments over artistic imagination.

The visual humorist Elliott Erwitt enlivens the collection with his 1956 photograph “California Kiss,” a romantic shot with a unique perspective: A couple at the beach is captured delivering the kiss in question, but only as witnessed through the car’s rearview mirror.

Musical icons are represented in the exhibition, spanning different periods and genres. Andrew Kent’s “David Bowie — the Thin White Duke” (1976) evocatively portrays the iconic pop artist during his “duke” phase, presenting a svelte figure within a backlit scene, outlined by a nocturnal ambiance. Renowned jazz photographer Herman Leonard captures Bowie in a clever layered scene, featuring Ella Fitzgerald from a club-stage perspective, with Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington gazing adoringly from the front row.

A timely moment featuring Bob Dylan—amidst the excitement surrounding the biopic A Complete Unknown—is represented by Don Hunstein’s immensely popular image “Bob Dylan and Suze,” famously known as the cover photo for Dylan’s career-launching album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Additionally, in another Dylan-related reference, Edie Sedgwick — a New York art personality with ties to Dylan and primarily recognized as an Andy Warhol “factory girl” — is displayed in all her slender, ethereal beauty in Burt Glinn’s “Andy Warhol with Edie Sedgwick and Chuck Wein.” The twist: Warhol is depicted as if emerging from a manhole on a New York street, quite literally a man in the street, accompanied by the glamorous presence of his models/props.

The predominantly black-and-white exhibition briefly transitions into vibrant and dynamic color in a medium that did not embrace color photography as art until the 1970s. A vivid array of fashion models emerges as the focal point in Corman Gigli’s large print “Models in the Windows” (evocative of the architectural window patterns found on Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti cover) while color, depicted through radiant fashion designs, sparkles and bursts forth in Sabine Weiss’s “Yves Saint Laurent, Premiere Dior Collection.”

In contrast, subtle notes of minimalist refinement momentarily infiltrate the glitzy and playful survey. The celebrated photographer Paul Caponigro’s “Two Pears” serves as a softly luminous still life study in dark and light contrasts. Similarly, the interplay of light and shadow defines George Tice’s “Country Road, Lancaster, PA” (1961), one of the most tranquil and profound images within the gallery. Tice crafts a sense of visual poetry in an image of a solitary Pennsylvania road, with its soft glow of a meandering path and a rounded vintage automobile enveloped in moody dark tones.

In my modest assessment: Photography, a medium that has experienced a tumultuous history in committed Santa Barbaran gallery spaces over the years, resonates well within this setting. More of this, please.