The show features the work of six photographers, including Azariah Aker, Anita Douthat, Beth Ganz, Cui Fei, Luc Demer and John Willis.
Materials from nature appear in several of the artists' works. Aker's series of small, gelatin-silver prints of moths allows the white negative space to seep through the moths' wings in his intimate and ethereal images.
A featured artist, Aker is also an associate director at the gallery.
Douthat's ghostly photos of women's clothing also evoke a similarly ethereal feeling.
This is due in part to Douthat's use of the photogram process, in which the artist places an object in a dark room on a piece of sunlight-sensitive photographic paper that is later exposed to light. This results in an image that is identical to the original object in both shape and size.
"I know that because it's an unusual process, I often think that [process] is what people see," Douthat said. "But I hope that's not all that they see. I hope that they have kind of an emotional response to them as well, but I don't know what that would be."
Douthat said viewers have called her work "sexy," while others have found the ghostly images of transparent clothing without a wearer frightening
In the photograph "Alterations-grape," grapevines peek through a transparent shift-dress. Another image shows a string of Christmas lights wrapping around a garment slip.
"I work a lot with objects that have some reference to the body, so I think it's sort of natural that I would start working with clothing," Douthat explained. "It's one of the easiest ways to refer to the human body, and it's a material light will go through. It has really interesting detail -- you can make a rich image with it."
The exhibition unfortunately does not feature a great range of work from each artist. Most of the pieces by each artist included in the exhibit depict a single subject.
Just as Aker focuses on moths, and Douthat on clothing, Ganz's two images are no exception -- both show the surface of a lagoon.
Ganz's technique -- a printmaking process called photogravure -- made it difficult initially to discern the subject of the work.
This printing process draws the viewer's eye to the algae and the reflection of trees on the water, allowing the viewer not only to discover the negative and positive space, but also the texture of the depicted scene.
In the photogravure process, Ganz first uses her photographs to make plates that she then inks, hand-wipes and cranks through a printing press with rollers. The press then records the impression onto paper, creating the final product.
"The process is very unusual and different," Ganz explained. "It looks old, yet my handling of it is very contemporary, so it looks new at the same time."
Several side-by-side images comprise the finished product in Ganz's "Long Lake."
Its partner piece is a ghost print of a similar image that embodies a more fantastical sense of the lagoon by employing a yellowish finish.
"What I do with my work is I always want to communicate a sense of reverence and spirituality in nature," Ganz said. "And I also want to invoke that response in the viewer."
All of her works on display inspire awe, even if only for the artist and her natural talent.
Fei's works on display also use nature as a starting point. Fei has created an "alphabet" of grapevines, which she has cut and assembled to resemble Chinese characters.
Willis' images focus on movement, which the viewer sees clearly when standing in front of the photographs lined up one after another.
As the eye follows the images down the line, it notices a tonal shift from the first image of murky water to the last image of bright bubbles that appear after a swimmer has broken the water's surface.
Demer's photos prove a bit more difficult to understand. His photos make use of small peaks of light in dark rooms, emanating, for example, from gaps in a window's blinds.
From a distance, the photographs appear to depict nothing more than a thin strand of light in a spectral box; yet as the viewer approaches the photograph, the details of the room come into focus.
Fortunately, the diversity seen among the artists' bodies of work makes up in part for the lack of variety within each artist's collection.
The final result is a fine collaboration that encourages viewers of the exhibit to consider the theme of spatial relations from a wide variety of angles.
"Photography is so immediately satisfying," Reeves said. "You don't have to work really hard to understand the medium, and often the ethos, of the photographer's work."
The artists' images allow for an interesting and engaging display, even if it leaves the viewer wishing for a broader sense of each artist's work.
The inclusion of more varied subjects would only have helped viewers in their effort to appreciate the artists' experimentations with positive and negative space.
The Spheris Gallery is located on South Main Street in Hanover. Its hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. "In the Absence" will run through Feb. 17.
