An Online Review by Deborah Kossich, Fort Dearborn-Chicago Photo Forum

"When I was a little boy . . . I dreamed about being an artist."

So writes local photographer/digital artist Jerry Hanzl, and from what this reviewer has seen on several visits to www.digitalartbyjerry.com, this artist has certainly made that dream come true.

Combining many years of training and experience in such diverse fields as computer engineering, fine arts and photography with a distinctly off-center point of view, this artist is producing a body of work which can only be seen in dreams! The site also features several galleries of very expressive unaltered prints.

The "Straight" Dope

Look at the latter in the Digital Photography galleries - and check out "The Cruise" groups as well - and one thing stands out immediately: this artist is a master of lighting, especially in the use of available light. It may be pointing out the obvious to say that one needs to know how to use light in order to make a decent image, or that the quality of light can be manipulated in the computer to make it look "right," but consider this. If one doesn't understand how light should make a subject look in the first place, how can one manipulate any image to make the light look right?

Complementing the quality of the light - and contrasting with it as well - is a wealth of texture and detail throughout. Compare the weathered and dilapidated barns in the "Old Carolina" gallery with the ancient Mayan ruins in Central America from the Altun Ha and Kohunlich collections. Visit the Animals or stroll through the Flowers and note the consistency. The softest light brings out the sharpest details and the richest colors.

Allow this reviewer a few more observations before we leave the unaltered prints to continue our journey of discovery. Take a walk through the Sunrise gallery and note how the placement of the horizon fequently splits the compositions. Also, the pairing of orange/yellow colors with cyan/blue hues, complementary in both the light and pigment palettes, leave the impression with this reviewer that the artist is a seeker of balance and harmony in all things, one of several recurring themes in this collection.

Picking a single favorite out of this wealth of imagery would be a tall order indeed. But if this reviewer were faced with the challenge, her choice would be a nearly monochromatic image titled "Reflect." A simple composition of silvery branches rising out of deep-sky water invites the viewer to do just that: reflect on that which is beneath the surface of all things ... and all people. These still waters could run very deep indeed.

Finally, consider the image titled "They are Watching." When this reviewer wrote about Dr. Volker Thewalt's Afghanistan web site three years ago, she made an observation about the difference a single picture element could make. Then, the difference was between black-and-white and color, and how objects that looked like nothing special in black-and-white became extraordinary when shot in color.

In "They are Watching," the difference involves lighting. Consider the subject: a crowd watching something, or someone. Full frontal lighting would, of course, make this crowd look quite innocuous. But turn the light around and leave the faces in shadow, and suddenly they seem quite a bit more sinister. Now the question of what - or who - they may be watching takes on a whole different shade of meaning, especially in these days of homeland paranoia, does it not?

"Hippies" - On Transitions and Balancing Acts

"We are stardust, we are golden . . . and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden"

---Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young---

Arguably the most evocative image in the whole collection, "Hippies" (attachment reprinted by permission of the artist) brings to memory the many "flower children" of the 1960s who took up communal life in an effort to return to a perceived state of innocence. And the subjects in this image appear to have done just that. This trio, possibly a family group, have returned to a primeval setting complete with wildflowers, trees and arboreal creatures with human-like faces.

But have they truly made the transition complete? If so, then what is one to make of faces painted like street mimes, masklike visages that at the same time invite notice while obscuring the identities of their wearers? What to make of patches of cloud and sky where one might expect to see solid objects: the animals' chests, the woman's body, the collars of the man and child? What of his hands around the thin air that should be her body? Are these perhaps the signs of a fading dream?

And what might the clothing signify? The constraints of culture, I'm thinking, perhaps the reason for the apparent failure to attain the dream of going back to nature?

Perhaps, as much as these three desire to "get back to the garden," that ideal may not be entirely possible, for the simple reason that we humans are cultural animals, for the equally simple reason that we are social animals.

And that seems to this reviewer to be the greatest challenge we humans face: learning to balance nature with culture.

". . . only in their dreams can men be truly free; 'twas always thus and always thus will be"

---Dead Poets Society---

Portraits of the Psyche: the Digital Art Galleries

"We must constantly look at things in a different way."

also from Dead Poets Society

Twisted images. Surrealscapes. Altered states. It's certainly safe to say that in his digital art galleries is where this artist's vision emerges in all its multi-faceted complexity. The sheer, and growing, number of these "mind scapes" leaves this reviewer with a choice as to how to proceed with her commentary.

She could point out "Lands End," with its subtle changing perspectives so reminiscent of M. C. Escher, one of her favorite artists; or the "Room with a View" which is more view than room; or the symbolic symmetry of "The Path is Well Lit." But given the sheer wealth of imagery in these galleries, trying to comment on each and every image that catches the eye is simply not really feasible on this side of reality. So permit this reviewer to focus instead on the many recurrent symbols to which she alluded in "The 'Straight' Dope" section of this review.

Pathways. The first that springs to this revieweer's mind, pathways, both natural and man-made, seem to abound throughout the images in all the galleries. How come? Do they indicate, perhaps, the many roads the artist has taken, or will take, on the journey that is life? Or could they be invitations to us to begin - or continue - our own journeys?

Doorways. Entryways inviting us to explore a different reality, a higher consciousness, a twilight-zone dimension of the imagination? And, to go along with the doors, windows offering us a glimpse into that other reality; perhaps the artist invites us to look for what he sees?

Birds and butterflies. If there's one thing both species have in common, it's flight. An invitation to escape our own reality for a while?

Lamp posts. There are lots of these lighting the way . . . to wherever our road(s) take us.

The symmetrical compositions to which this reviewer alluded earlier, and related to them, the repeating patterns that make up so many of these unreal realities. Order from chaos, or the search for balance, perhaps?

The many live-oak and palmetto-scrub backgrounds. This reviewer sees in these a deep affinity for the natural world on the artist's part. Then again, there's that flower-child longing for getting back to that primitive place in the soul, a notion not without its appeal - even for lifelong city kids like your reviewer.

And most of all, the light - or should I say, the Light - of dawn. The logical interpretation suggests itself here. The Light surely symbolizes Enlightenment, the Ultimate Truth. (For this reviewer, the story of Esko's pie plates, from the 1982 film Resurrection, comes ro mind. Early in that film, the protagonist finds herself out of gas while driving through a desert. She stops at a ramshackle service station run by a fellow named Esko, who shows her an odd-lot collection of stuff, including two tinfoil pie plates nailed beside the door. On one is written the phrase "God is love." And on the other, the words "and vice versa." What a concise summation of the Ultimate Truth!) Keep on heading toward the light.

If there is one unifying theme to this collection, it would appear to be this: while several overtly religious symbols appear in various images (crosses, chapels, arched trees and raised arms, to name a few), it seems to this reviewer that the artist's entire collection is imbued with a strong sense of the metaphysical. Whether the artist belongs to any organized church or not, I don't know; but whichever is the case, his work is proof positive of something I've believed all of my adult life: church goers or not, we humans are spiritual animals, one and all, with a driving need to make some kind of sense of - and a place for ourselves in - the Grand Scheme that is Life, the Universe and Everything.

To those of you who have stuck with me this far, I thank you for your patience. This has been a long ride indeed. And a special vote of thanks goes to the artist, Jerry Hanzl, for allowing this humbled reviewer to include his image, "Hippies," to illuminate this review.

Art reveals the artist. We are all artists, works in progress, each in our own way. Come see the work-in-progress that is digitalartbyjerry.com. And enjoy the journey. Or start a journey of your own. It has been my deepest pleasure to show you this path.

"The powerful play [that is Life] goes on and you may contribute a verse."

---also from Dead Poets Society---

Debbie

A member of the Fort Dearborn-Chicago photo Forum since 1984, Deborah Kossich has served the Forum as secretary, chaired the slide committee and was director of the club's E6 program. She has lived in Florida since 1994, and keeps involved by writing about photographic happenings in the Sunshine State.

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