Limits of Photography is a photography-based exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Photography that features ten artists that take the photographic medium and manipulates it to their advantage. Some combine collage, painting, or video with photography to execute their own goal. Rod Slemmons curated an interesting group of artists with the common visual theme and even though the show has its strengths, it also had its flaws.

Its strength resides in most of the images themselves. Particularly the ones in the room to the right as one walks in, was a strong set of images. Sally Ketcham’s images are interesting canvases of image, paint strokes, and map collaging that discreetly portray the balance between living comfortably and not. This room in general is well placed. Each image flows from one to the other and then transitions to the Doug Stapleton’s collages made from cut photos. The juxtaposition of Stapleton’s and Ketcham’s images has an playful transportation of the eye. The most compelling piece of the exhibit, however, is Chris Naka’s “I can’t feel my face” because of the simplicity and straightforwardness of the idea that relationship between the viewer and the viewed. Naka’s choice of using convenient devices is a fresh way of getting a point across, and not to mention successful.

Even though the show holds a lot of visually pleasing work, it does have its flaws. For example, the room that everyone first walks into is uninspiring and bland. Rhona Shand’s work is commendable but it seems as though these images could be hanging up in the rooms of hotel of terror. The painting stroke overlay feel aimless and kitsch. Then there is Randy Hayes grid of globs of teal paint of incomprehensible subject matter and painted tacks that definitely stuck out like a sore thumb. The grid felt detached from what Hayes writes in his statement and is definitely the weakest of his Ruins series. The placement of the best work of the show seemed hidden, Vera Klement’s work is at the very top where sometimes cannot be all the way seen for a class or group of people gather around the tables to view selected prints. Either use that room for one thing or the other because the gallery atmosphere is broken when met by huddled talking college kids. Also, Naka’s video is put in the stair case where one would have to stop halfway of the stairs or stand awkwardly right before the entrance.

Of all the work, the most interesting is Vera Klement’s collocated photos against drawn pictures. They are skillful pairing that communicate to one another based off of the poem that is discussed in the Karsten Lund statement. Her quiet portraits of single heads and scraggly landscapes whisper to each other as if they were produced already as one.

Overall, Limitations of photography was definitely a play on words but not just for going past the boundaries of photography and referring to the walls of photography, but because its space and the choice of what went into the show put a limit on letting it flow. At time there were triumphant portrayals of how these artists have overcome the limitations. Then again, there were also times when they seemed to limit themselves.