Ask Michael B. Platt to explain his work, and the Washington, D.C., artist hesitates for a moment.

He has been described as a “printmaker” (he prefers the phrase image maker), someone who takes photography and manipulates it to create something that’s entirely different – not exactly a photo, not exactly a collage, and certainly not a painting or drawing.

Platt calls it “computer-generated imagery.”

“If Romare Bearden was alive today, he’d use Photoshop,” Platt explained to Qcitymetro.com at the opening of his latest show, Spirits and Places, at the Harvey B. Gantt Center last week.
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The ghostly image above combines photos taken at an abandoned prison in Philadelphia and at an abandoned Philadelphia hotel that once belonged to Father Divine. (Photo by Qcitymetro.com)
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Spirits and Places consists of more than 20 pieces, some inspired by a recent trip to Ghana and South Africa. In others Platt has inserted ghostly images into a jumble of photographs taken at an abandoned prison in Philadelphia and at an abandoned Philadelphia hotel that once belonged to Father Divine.

The show also includes a miniature shotgun house made of unpainted strips of wood. The green mailbox out front was taken from the remains of his grandmother’s house that was destroyed in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina.

However one labels Platt’s work, his pieces are penetrating and hard to ignore. They have an ethereal quality that evokes thoughts of a world beyond – thus the name “Spirits and Places.”

Platt used the phrase “ghost images.”

“I like to take pictures of places where things used to go on,” he said. “The worst thing in the world is to show me this chair that’s supposed to be 500 years old and no one has sat in it; it won’t mean anything to me. But show me the same chair and I can see somebody’s butt print – that means something to me.”

Like many artists, Platt seems to resist the notion of being defined too narrowly by those who seek to label his work.

“If I really had my way,” he said, “everything would be untitled. If you walk around the room, you will see what they’re about.”

Spirits and Places will be on display at the Gantt Center through Aug. 15.
 

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