Equilibrium: Kaylan Buteyn + Ronald Toth

Ronald Toth is a retired biologist, former Professor of Biological Sciences, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois. His background is in classical plant anatomy where everything is documented by either drawings or photographs. He started taking photographs of plant parts as an undergraduate in plant anatomy lab and was taught by the teaching assistants. He received better instruction from a professional photographer, who showed him how to make black and white prints of electron micrographs in a class. Instruction was limited to one short session and covered the basics of how to make an acceptable print for class. Most of what he has learned since is from trial and error, reading and looking at a lot of art works in books, museums, and galleries.

Over the years, Toth has done a few small photography projects. One was a series of black and white silver gelatin prints of pine cones. Another was a series of night pictures also using the silver gelatin print technique. The theme was to show how an object is accentuated and revealed by artificial light, without which you would not see it at night or it would just blend into the background objects. He has recently started a series of color digital images of abstracted plant parts, usually seen in anatomy classes. These are often abstracted to the point that they are unrecognizable as biological specimens. After a life in science where everything had to be represented as accurately as possible, Toth finds it nice to break free from such bonds.