“Photography is dead,” Christopher Russell declares in the statement for his current show, arguing that with the ease and popularity of digital manipulation, “there is no longer a belief that the captured image is anything more than a record of personalized fictions.” Yet Russell delights in the liberation engendered by this so-called death, employing photography as a point of departure for devising his own fictional realms. Undermining the mechanical illusionism normally expected of photographs, he veils his camera lens with colored fabric to capture abstract photos of landscapes; then uses razorblades to scratch detailed representational vistas into the prints. Having plied this technique for several years, he has honed his compositions. Compared with his last LA show, “Explorers,” the scenes here are starker, less ornate and less computerized in appearance, resulting in greater emotive impact. Stylized latticework eerily delineates shipwrecks, waterfalls and a rural settlement. Tensions between mechanical and handmade are heightened by creased paper, curled shavings, silver paint, aerosol droplets resembling sea spray, and shadows cast by tiny etchings in picture frame glazing. Willamette Falls #4 (2019, pictured above) evokes the feeling of sinking into a fiery ocean below the towering masts of a ship aflame.  Painting has been pronounced dead many times, the earliest of which is attributed to Paul Delaroche upon first encountering a photograph in 1839. Russell’s painterly photographs insinuate that the roles are reversed, or at least equalized.

Von Lintel Gallery
1206 Maple Ave. #212
Los Angeles, CA 90015
Show runs through Mar. 7