Discovering the Discoverer

Alice Burr: A California Pictorialist
Rediscovered. At the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Shows through
January 7, 2007.

Reviewed by Beth Taylor-Schott

It’s easy to miss amazing things around here, even when you’re
looking right at them. Here’s one way to know when to pay
attention: whenever you are standing in the Von Romberg Gallery at
the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, a chapel-like space that regularly
contains quiet but remarkable shows. Alice Burr: A California
Pictorialist Rediscovered is no exception. If you only stick your
head in, you will think something like, “Oh, how sweet, an early
lady photographer.” The prints will seem to be somewhat technically
primitive. And you will have missed the entire show.

Here is what you will discover if you
slow down and look and read. Most of the images are Bromoil prints,
the product of an early 20th-century technological advance that
offered photographers greater control than black-and-white silver
prints. Bromoil is notoriously difficult to master, so we can
assume that Burr more than knew what she was doing.