Once
upon a time, recalled critic A.D. Coleman, the heppest venue
in New York to catch the latest underground photography was
at Norbert Kleber's brownstone in Greenwich Village, where
emerging artists were given the wine-and-cheese and press
release treatment despite the narrow confines.
Llewellyn
Berry, a photographer and teacher for more than three decades,
is bringing back a little of that 1967-vintage Village flavor
to the District vis-a-vis the KindaLew Gallery, which he recently
opened down the hall from his apartment overlooking the National
Cathedral
Berry,
now 55, has been shooting since he became fixated -- at the
tender age of 12 --with the work of his photographer-chemist
father. A teasingly erotic portrait of a woman stretching
her tank top to the point of bursting adorns his father's
easel in the gallery, located on the 6th floor of The Elaine
building.
Last year
Berry took a substantial portion of the inheritance he received
from his mother's death and put it into KindaLew, which currently
features an exhibition of 13 of his black-and-white prints.
Ultimately, however, he hopes to transform the gallery into
a showcase for budding artists.
Berry
taught at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts for 15 years,
and thus his own work demonstrates a mastery of monochrome
printing. He says that he has a fondness for scenes that project
an air of "calmness," and a few of them brush with
the sublime.
"Woman
Sitting on a Persian Rug" depicts the titular subject
touched with a hint of Rembrandt lighting, and his use of
Kodalith technique here reduces the image to pure black and
white tones. A pair of 1988 portraits of Ellington school
dancers alternately catches one performer in mid-air -- limbs
bent in a spidery pose -- blending into a ramified backdrop,
and a duo crisscrossing arms and legs in a delicately formal
posture adorned by a single star that suggests a supernova
over Bethlehem. "Metro Bus on the Move, Adams Morgan"
boasts two "punctum," Roland Barthes' name for a
photograph's center of attention. One is the streak of a city
bus quickly moving toward its destination, the other is a
disproportionately large side-view mirror that literally draws
the spectator into the scene.
"Photographic
Prints by Llewellyn Berry" is on display at KindaLew
Gallery, 3210 Wisconsin Ave., Suite 602, 202/237-6794, through
Aug. 12.
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By day, Matt Spangler is a telecom reporter for McGraw-Hill
in Washington, but occasionally he sneaks out at lunchtime
on "special assignments" for
cultureflux, covering photo shows in local galleries and museums.
Once
upon a time, recalled critic A.D. Coleman, the heppest venue
in New York to catch the latest underground photography was
at Norbert Kleber's brownstone in Greenwich Village, where
emerging artists were given the wine-and-cheese and press
release treatment despite the narrow confines. 
"Woman
Sitting on a Persian Rug" depicts the titular subject
touched with a hint of Rembrandt lighting, and his use of
Kodalith technique here reduces the image to pure black and
white tones. A pair of 1988 portraits of Ellington school
dancers alternately catches one performer in mid-air -- limbs
bent in a spidery pose -- blending into a ramified backdrop,
and a duo crisscrossing arms and legs in a delicately formal
posture adorned by a single star that suggests a supernova
over Bethlehem. "Metro Bus on the Move, Adams Morgan"
boasts two "punctum," Roland Barthes' name for a
photograph's center of attention. One is the streak of a city
bus quickly moving toward its destination, the other is a
disproportionately large side-view mirror that literally draws
the spectator into the scene.