PHOTOGRAPHS
Berger, Paul
U.S. (1948 - )
Mathematics #37A
1976
Gelatin silver print on resin-coated paper
11 x 13 7/8 in. (27.9 x 35.2 cm) image and sheet size
Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection
FA 2010.137

BLACKBOARD JUMBLE
It was once alleged against photography that it fell short of being art because it failed to “elevate the imagination.” No doubt some early works did little more than record how things looked; but photographic artworks today deliberately engage and inspire the imagination. They have the uncanny power of transforming their subject matter in various ways even as they reveal it. Here, Paul Berger shows us something perfectly familiar—blackboards covered with mathematical symbols and erasures——rendered strange and evocative through the overlapping of images and the juxtaposition of strips of film. We know what we are looking at, and yet we don’t. The commonplace has been transfigured in a way that denies external reference. Those of us who dreaded mathematics lessons might approach such images with feelings that others don’t share. It doesn’t matter, however. Whatever mathematics lessons remained on the college blackboards when Paul went in after class to photograph are obliterated by erasures and jumbled by double exposed negatives. A mathematician would have no advantage over anyone else in deciphering the lines. Content has been recast into pure form. And what were once math lessons have been turned into a wild and wonderful dance of line and light.
--Ronald Moore, Professor of Philosophy, University of Washington
Cascading Dimensions
Blackboards play an essential role in mathematics research. Through them we communicate early (sometimes half-baked) ideas and hunches as well as present complete results and age-old theories. At the same time, blackboards have limitations. They, like photographs, share the limitation of trying to represent a three-dimensional world in only two dimensions.
One of the many intriguing qualities of these photographs by Paul Berger is that his technique of exposing several images over one another gives the impression of three dimensions. Incidentally, many of the blackboards shown in these photographs also aim to show us three-dimensional objects. In this way, these photographs of blackboards become two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional objects, which are themselves representing three-dimensional objects in only two dimensions.
And then there are the beautiful photographs of smudges that look like clouds; and erased, dried, and overwritten parts that can hardly be deciphered anymore, letting our imagination freely interpret what they might represent. We are no longer in the world of mathematics, having passed into a wonderland created by the artist.
--Sándor Kovács, Professor of Mathematics, University of Washington

The Half-Life of Numbers
I had the great pleasure of discovering this series of photographs at the Henry when I first arrived at the University of Washington in 1997. I was immediately drawn to the abstract forms—the rich, velvety blacks; the sweeping, organic, gestural lines; and the contrasting rhythms of the photographic frames. On closer inspection, I realized that the images were of partially erased chalkboards—a wonderful transformation of the ordinary into ethereal elegance. I like to think of these compositions as a comment on the beauty of mathematics, or perhaps an observation on our noble, yet futile efforts to understand the underlying patterns of the universe. In any case, after many years, I still look upon these images with delight.
--Karen Cheng, Professor of Design, School of Art, University of Washington

Text panel from Viewpoints: Paul Berger, March 8, 2014 to June 1, 2014