When we map out something for another, we make the enormous graspable. Vast spaces become palm-sized, the landscape recognizable, negotiable, compact.

Artistic study of the human figure is no less intimate, although contours and details of humans are paradoxical, both personal and universal, familiar and mysterious. Carl Hyatt’s intimate cartography finds its expression photographically, in silver and platinum prints and carbon inks, at The Banks Gallery in Market Square through May 16.

Hyatt is a protégé of Ansel Adams, but largely self-taught. His reverence for the alchemy of light and darkroom is abundantly clear in his work. The current exhibition encompasses 20 years without being a retrospective (not included here is a body of work from Peru, which we can look forward to seeing in a year or two), and his primary subject matters are landscape, seascape and the human form. The show contains modernist explorations of church interiors, industrial spaces, and Portsmouth’s both beloved and cursed waterfront salt piles.

Hyatt sees things in magnificent terms, whether their size mirrors this perspective or not.
If one comes down on the beloved side of salt, Hyatt’s platinum prints of the salt piles at the Granite State Minerals pier are studies in tones and values parallel to Edward Weston’s work in Alaska’s mountains. The sifting salts are a time-lapse geography, worked upon by ships, trucks and loaders like centuries of glaciation in fast motion. If not for the scale of a tire track or crane boom, you might be viewing Denali or McKinley across 100 miles of tundra.

This shifting topography is mirrored in his female nudes. Several platinum prints, photographed at intimate distance, transcend humanness and move into sculptural landscape. In one, a highlighted shoulder blade and shoulder repeat the highlighted curve of hip, cheek and thigh; the curve of an extended calf infers a diagonal line of horizon. The human form moves past its particulars into something new and intriguing while retaining what originally amazes.

Hyatt’s platinums are always contact prints, pulled from negatives in direct contact with their paper rather that projected larger from afar. Exposed with diffuse light, they’re coaxed into being, one by one, by Hyatt in his darkroom. Most of the show’s nudes are 11 by 14 inches. The show’s curator, Jamie LaFleur, calls Hyatt an “American Tonalist at heart.”

New 30 by 40-inch seascapes represent a foray into digital media. A range of papers and ink choices render shorelines, skylines and waterlines in a marriage crisp yet painterly. Hyatt observes in an interview that the digital printing processes offer the feel of depth. Rather than remaining upon the surface like silver emulsion, inks are absorbed, creating rich interplay with the paper. Blacks and shadows gradiate and brights radiate; seagull droppings almost glimmer on a black jeweled background of wet basalt. Waves like brushstrokes break upon water-smoothed stones. A ring of clouds spotlights a set of swells two miles out. Textures and line intersections rendered in “Standing Stone #1” are beautifully composed and worthy of Old Masters etching.

Hyatt’s work is well-collected, gracing walls near and far. Many locals became familiar with him through shows at the Robert Lincoln Levy Gallery in 1993 and 1996. The nearby Currier Museum of Art acquired work during “Moments in Time: Master Photographs” in 1999, as did the Addison Gallery at Phillips Andover during “Industrial Evolution.” His work will be part of the MacDowell Colony centennial celebration next year, as he was a MacDowell Colony Fellow in 1997. Farther afield, his work is collected at Boston’s Museum of Fine Art, The Manfred Heiting Collection in Amsterdam, and the personal collection of Steven Spielberg. His work from Peru, where he spends a part of each winter, was acquired as part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian.

Each subject of Hyatt’s work, be it portrait, landscape or interior, beautiful woman or gorgeous seaport, possesses its own integrity and intimate quality. Certainly your day will be enlivened as you follow Hyatt’s map, rambling across the topography of everyday things made magnificent.

The photographs of Carl Austin Hyatt
through May 16 at The Banks Gallery, 16 Market Square, Portsmouth, 603-431-9799. Hours are Saturday and Sunday noon to 5 or by appointment.