The Camera Club of New York celebrates its 125^th anniversary with First Impression, an exhibition of contemporary work by artists employing traditional and arcane methods to create unique images. The show was curated by Michael Mazzeo and the featured artists are Marcel Breuer, Eric William Carroll, Dan Estabrook, Michael Floman, Michelle Kloehn, and Chris McCaw.

This small exhibition is an excellent introduction to innovative work that needs to be seen in its original form to be appreciated. Consisting of black and white images by established and emerging artists, the show challenges the notion of photography as a descriptive medium. The largest print on view, Being, 2000 by Michael Floman, is a cameraless image that evokes the essence of abstraction in nature. The light source for this images was a swarm of fireflies, which become whorling forms of light, mobility and energy. To see a video of Michael Floman at work, see Under the Cover of Darkness on YouTube.

Left to right: Untitled, 2002, copyright Marco Breuer, courtesy of Evan Mirapaul; Being, copyright Michael Flomen, courtesy of the Artist and Hasted Hunt Kraeutler; One Hand, copyright Dan Estabrook, courtesy of the artist and Daniel Cooney Fine Art.

Marco Breuer's work has been described by art critic Vince Aletti as having "the intelligence and wit of the mid-century modernist avant-garde and the anything-goes audacity of photography's earliest innovators." Always experimental, using methods designed to destroy the surface of photographic printing paper, Breuer pushes the idea of cameraless photography to extremes, creating Minimalist designs that are more like paintings than photographs. For an excellent description of how he creates images, see an article in Art in America by Jonathan Goodman. Breuer's recent book, Early Recordings, is available from Aperture.

Chris McCaw's "Sunburn" photographs have made him something of an underground hero to art students around the country. Shot onto paper negatives using a 16 x 20, and recently, a 30 x 40-inch camera, his long exposures capture the sun's movement across the sky. In GSP126 Pacific Ocean, the sun becomes a gestural streak on the gelatin silver paper background. The sun's image creates a dimensional form with a metallic earth-toned coloration that is entirely unlikely in black-and-white photography.

These works and others in the show offer a view into the idea of using unusual source materials for photographs, from swimming fish and celestial objects to an artist's dreams, offering images that evoke the pure energy of nature to hallucinogenic escapes from reality.

First Impression continues through October 30 at The Camera Club of New York. 336 West 37^th Street, 2^nd floor, New York, NY. For information about the exhibition, classes and studio rentals, please visit the website. For information about Dan Estabrook's two-day intensive salt paper printing workshop this weekend, please call 212-260-9927.

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