by Mary Murray, Curator

Monterey Museum of Art, Spring 2002

Mark Citret has always been intrigued by the everyday wonders of the visual world. He still remembers vividly the pleasure it gave him in the second grade to look up from his sandwich during the first minutes of the lunch recess at the benches outlining the school yard and see 400 fellow students holding up white squares of sandwich bread to their mouths. Citret's recognition of the many wonders that quietly wait to be discovered in the midst of daily life shapes and informs his photographic vision.

Thoughtful and extremely articulate, Citret has a strong affinity for language; however, there is something intrinsically visual in his nature that finds its best expression in photography, a medium that is deceptively subtle. With its language of familiarity, photography seduces the viewer through apparent truthfulness. But this artform is at its best precisely when it takes us beyond the literal and explores what lies outside of our ordinary way of seeing. While other media can also open us in this way, photography is particularly compelling because it is so inherently believable.

For almost thirty five years Citret has primarily created photographs with a view camera and tripod—traditional tools of the West Coast photographer. Yet, since the mid-1990s, he has used with increasing frequency a handheld 35mm camera, considered inferior in a tradition that equates large negatives with the greatest print quality. Allowing himself to break with custom, Citret has found that working with the smaller camera has freed him to be more spontaneous, no matter which camera he uses.

Rather than striving toward the perfectly previsualized image sought by Ansel Adams on the ground glass of his view camera, and subsequently aspired to by others, Citret wants to see in a print something more than he was conscious of in his subject. He speaks of his current way of photographing as "wandering around with a camera," something that is considerably harder to do with a heavy view camera than with a handheld. But for Citret, "wandering" indicates a state of mind that is vitally important. In his experience, the best photographs cannot be forced or even sought, they are discovered with a receptive mind; when such moments arrive, it is helpful to have a camera close to hand.

The sense of expansive awareness that for Citret is a prerequisite to photography enables him to capture the small everyday flashes of insight that come when we are open to them and often go before we can fully grasp or appreciate them. Sights that most of us tend not to notice—a weathered phone book, an empty bulletin board, a twisted chain link fence—seem pregnant with meaning, made spectacular and somehow poignant through the artist's eye. These simple objects looked at with great attention, become a meditation in seeing, an example of the way light can illuminate an everyday scene, transforming it before our eyes from dully ordinary to achingly beautiful.

More than mere objects, such images suggest human presence and its transitory nature, even though the very absence of humanity forms the atmosphere of the photograph. When people are included in a photograph, they instantly become the focus of attention; the strength and undoubted reality of the human figure cannot be ignored, and often such photographs are perceived as narrative, whether or not that was the artist's intention. Citret's images instead create a powerful sense of presence precisely by what he leaves out.

Many of the images that catch Citret's eye spring from the intersection of the world we were given and that which we have created: juxtaposing images of man and nature, while acknowledging the irony in any distinction that seems to set humankind outside the realm of nature. One such image is Cafe, Monument Valley. Here, in an image that looks out on isolated buttes individually framed by cafe windows, a visually arresting subject is also an incongruous composition of the manmade and the natural; as twinned water glasses and salt shakers echo the far vaster uprights outside, the frame of the photograph repeats and, in turn, encloses the window frames. While there is an ironic quality to the image, its haunting beauty played out in subtle tones of light and shadow skillfully questions the idea of the uninhabited wilderness as the epitome of all that is beautiful—a tenet of the West Coast tradition.

There is a streak of irreverence in Mark Citret that enjoys questioning ideas that have solidified into convention. He does not take on ideas or ideals wholesale, rather each one is thought through and tested for its integrity. This willingness to challenge comes strongly to the fore when he sees something that suggests the principles of photography are being hardened into stone or when its tenets seem poised to overwhelm its creative flexibility. This ability has enabled him to question the viability of his own beliefs and move beyond those that no longer fit; by testing each step, he has found a path that is his truly own.

As early as 1971 Mark Citret was finding ways to make photography work for him, ways that sometimes put him at odds with the general trends of West Coast straight photography. As an undergraduate student at San Francisco State University, he printed one particular photograph in a tonal range that supported the delicacy of the image rather than the zone system aesthetic, which called for a full range of values in each photograph. Citret's choice was strongly criticized by his class and instructor, and even became a controversial issue within the photography department. Later, this same photograph drew praise from both Ruth Bernhard and Ansel Adams, giving Citret an important lesson on following his instincts and avoiding the perils of prevailing trends.

Citret's appreciation for the delicate nuances possible in black and white photography still holds strong today. It was in searching for ways to convey the ideas of the softer ranges that frequently appeal to him that he came upon a process and a paper that enabled him to create what he calls "vellum" prints. The vellum perfectly compliments the subtlety of Citret's vision, creating prints that glow with a depth and richness. Luminous and warm, the vellums heighten the sense of everyday epiphany found in his images.

Mark Citret treats all subjects as equally valid when he is looking for photographic material, all things as potential sources of wonder. He has said that for him downtown San Francisco is a subject equal to Yosemite, suggesting that the best photographs are not made from the most obviously beautiful subjects. While it doesn't take much imagination to find Half Dome breathtaking, Mark Citret's photographs reveal just how rewarding it might be to cultivate the kind of seeing that unveils the wonders we overlook every day.