THE PORTLAND MERCURY - 5.25.06-5.31.06

ZOE CROSHER
 BY JOHN MOTLEY
       

According to Allan Sekula (one of Zoe Crosher's professors at CalArts),          
Los Angeles cannot be definitively documented. Sekula believes the city          
can never take on a static essence because the reality of LA is constantly          
trying to catch up to the fantasy of what it should be. In response, Crosher          
spent five years photographing what is undeniably essential to the city:          
change and transition. In her Out the Window project, Crosher has compiled          
31 images shot from hotels surrounding LAX, each documenting a plane making          
its descent into the airport. At small A projects this month, the entire          
body of work has been collected for the first time since she began Out         
 the Window in 2001.
         
Using the imagery of travel—namely, hotels and airplanes—Crosher          
depicts LA as an anchorless no man's land. The city's interiors are anonymous         
 spaces, where every aspect of the rooms she photographs is undoubtedly          
replicated in the unseen rooms on either side. The exteriors are equally          
void of identity: urban sprawl, lots full of parked cars, and hazy gray         
skies. Any document that is captured is profoundly temporal, relegated         
 to the split second the shutter curtain opens, so that an airplane appears          
tiny and stationary in the corner of a window.

 What charges these images with a sense of specificity is the insistent          
presence of the photographer herself. In some pieces, the camera's flash          
is reflected in a glint of light in the window. In others, the traces          
of Crosher's presence are less subtle: the rumpled comforter of a slept-in          
bed or, as in "LAX Topper Hotel," a paper bag and plastic          
cup from Burger King. In fact, as part of the project, Crosher spent the          
night in each room photographed, and created her images early the following          
morning—adding a performative aspect to the process. This seems          
appropriate given that the images, which are occasionally blurry or overexposed,          
place far greater emphasis on concept than technical virtuosity. Crosher          
may concede to the impossibility of preserving any permanent truth about          
LA. But, in the focused documentations of Out the Window, she finds an          
apt metaphor for a city in a constant state of change.