Working at the intersection of art and technology, Petoskey-based artist Robert deJonge crafts digitally-manipulated photography designed to sharpen his viewer’s view of the world around us. The understated embellishment isn’t so much modified landscape photography as it is an attempt to create a sort of restrained hyperrealism.

A particularly nuanced miniaturist, deJonge’s keenly realized photographs make us see the world as we would like to see it. And as such, his exhibit for the University of Michigan Health System’s Gifts of Art, A Walk Along the Shore, is a technological homage to such photographic landscape greats as Ansel Adams and Michigan’s own master landscape photographer, Howard Bond.

Yet unlike Adams or Bond—both of whom grapple with nature as it presents itself through their photographic technology—deJonge goes the additional step of attenuating our perception of the external world through digital means. So while Adams and Bond found ways of sharpening our perception of the natural world from within their photographic frame, deJonge chooses instead to selectively modify his landscapes with minute attention that heightens the appearance of his world.

In an earlier era, these modifications would have been color-tinted by hand. And this touch-up, so to speak, created drama through the selective addition of pigments, thereby adding one layer of articulation upon the initial photographic base. But by utilizing digital modification, deJonge instead imperceptibly shifts the emotional tension of his composition from outside to inside the frame. The manipulation of the materials therefore differs from one sort of art to another, even if the intent itself remains roughly the same.

In his Gift of Art gallery statement, deJonge explains this in more detail:

Art is worship. Using a camera and computer, I try to build images that express a spirit of wonder and playfulness.

I also enjoy drawing from the deep well of art history. I’m inspired by the magical world of Paul Klee; the lyrical world of (Marc) Chagall; and the natural connections of the (Canadian) Group of Seven (also known as the 1920s Algonquin School).

As an artist, I embrace the entire gamut of possibilities within the digital imaging world. When I capture images with my camera, I create a mental list of what the images can become through the manipulation of computer processing.

Capturing images is like collecting found objects to create an assemblage. Individual frames in the camera will most likely be combined with other frames to ‘build’ a new image. It’s exciting, it’s challenging, and it’s fun to have a digital palette to work with.

Fun is certainly the word. His signature photograph, amongst the dozen pieces that make up A Walk Along the Shore, is a memorable artwork entitled “Lights and Love.” This oversized horizontal masterpiece is ostensibly a visage of a north-looking Michigan aurora borealis. Yet where these broad bands of light that have a magnetic and electrical source are intrinsically dramatic, deJonge uses them as a mere platform for his art.

The photo features two broad strips of yellow light straddling a distant inlet at night with bookend stripes of attenuated pink bands. But while these lights alone would dominate the composition, deJonge paints mitigated shafts of green grass whose vertical placement creates an internal tension in the photograph—essentially a curvilinear belt of primary pigments braced by a horizontal secondary plume.

What’s left is a neutral-enough shoreline and darkened sky. And this shift of emphasis in turn creates a new dimension in art that doesn’t rely on the modernist objective mingling of artforms. Rather, deJonge’s union of photographic composition to the digital domain creates an expanded palette whose modification is quite nearly infinite.

The wonder of “Lights and Love” is not that the photograph has been digitally enhanced—after all, this is effectively true of virtually every professional image we now see in print or online. Rather, deJonge’s restricted discipline in creating his digitally enhanced art creates modifications that will only be noticed with the closest inspection. And, for most of us, that’s enough to satisfy both the eye and the mind.

John Carlos Cantú has written extensively on our community's visual arts in a number of different periodicals.

“A Walk Along the Shore: Digital Imaging” will run through March 13 at the University of Michigan Health System (Main Corridor, Floor 2, Gifts of Art Gallery - 1500 E. Medical Center Dr). Gallery hours are 8 am to 8 pm, daily. For information, call 734-936-ARTS.