Head strong Gary Schneider’s animated specimens BY CHRISTOPHER MILLIS

Never in a million years did I think it was possible to feel anything less than outright enthusiasm for a Gary Schneider exhibit. I’ve been following Schneider’s dark, brooding, idiosyncratic photography for a long time, and the trajectory he appeared to be taking — from arresting images born in self-absorption to a greater embrace of the world; from a focus on minuscule and emblematic human details to a wider camera lens that admitted entire personae — promised discovery.

Traces of that mission can be found in the current exhibit of Schneider’s work at Harvard and in its scaled-down complement at Howard Yezerski Gallery. Both exhibits show his mastery of his medium, and both have a version of his 1996 magnum opus John in 16 Parts. (The version at Harvard is crisper, with sharper highlights.) Yet the very quality that in the past has delivered a provocative edge to Schneider’s imagery has been laid on so thick of late that the shows suffocate.

I’m talking about this artist’s idea that the notion of the specimen — the living or dead life form subjected to systematic examination — should inform every aspect of his art. Ears, dried blood, intestinal flora, human chromosomes, and an ophthalmologist’s view of a pair of retinas are just some of the specimens for which Schneider has earned a reputation as an inventive, iconoclastic photographer. His 1997 series Genetic Self Portraits, on which the Harvard show relies, represented nothing less than the elevation of enhanced and manipulated scientific images to the plane of sometimes disturbing, often enchanting, invariably intelligent art.

If one seeks an understanding beyond the cellular level, however, specimens need to be looked at dynamically — they belong to packs and flocks and streams and grammar schools. Yet one gets the sense from these two shows that the techniques and attitudes that made Genetic Self Portraits outstanding — the probing of something in isolation, the identification of its parts — is precisely what makes many of the later portraits come across as stifled, enervated, and canned. The artist appears to have decided ahead of time what each portrait would look like; the specimens have had no say.

In Genetic Self Portraits, even the most powerful imagery quickly transcends its specimen status. Compare the middle section of Intestinal Flora with its counterpart in another work from the same series, Hair. The perfectly cropped, centrally situated middle of the Intestinal Flora triptych looks like an aqueous grape bunch or the egg deposit of a fish. Its pearly spheres float against a dark backdrop that could be a rock formation or an ocean floor. A pleasing, cerebral study in texture and light and formal composition, Intestinal Flora remains stuck in the surprise of its title. Give it a different name (Aquarium Views?) and we’d be much speedier at nodding our respects and moving on to the less static and premeditated.

Fortunately, there’s much to move on to. Like Intestinal Flora, Hair is a triptych, and it testifies to no less an astute understanding of the medium. But it’s alive with a momentum and tactile immediacy and sense of progression. For one thing, Hair’s middle section can’t be discussed separately from the other two — the central image of this holistic work is inextricable from its neighbors. And it’s kinetic in the way, from the far left edge, the hair extends full throttle into black space like a chameleon’s tongue about to pull down an insect. By the third frame, the monstrous body has raised its head, which turns backward in the direction from which it’s been moving like a snake whose tail’s been pulled. Gone is the control, the deliberateness, the muted, balanced calm of Intestinal Flora. Viewing Hair is like looking at an after-image when a flash has popped. And stretching as it does horizontally across the lower third of its first two frames, when it loops back in the third frame (shaped like a deformed arm flexing a biceps), the piece reads as diabolically animated.

The bulk of the Harvard show beyond Genetic Self Portraits consists of oversized portraits of faces (for more colorful versions, visit the Yezerski) and hand prints, and both groups are put in perspective by John in 16 Parts. A huge installation of 16 shadowy, separately framed 20x16 black-and-white photographs of fractions of the same man’s face, John in 16 Parts feels like Mount Rushmore in a kaleidoscope. Seven eyes, two ears, four mouths, and a little more than three noses combine to create a dynamic pattern that engages you with its almost cinematic movement. (Each section suggests its own film still.) More important, though, is its emotional complexity and range. The upper left eye looks broodingly inward; the one below it appears mischievous and extroverted. The one pair of eyes imply pain or anticipation; the mouths to the right suggest by turns humor, resolution, and repose. And unlike Schneider’s later single-image portraits, with their deliberately distorted features that look as if they were being sucked into a vacuum, John’s is a pleasant-looking, refined, symmetrical face.

At the same time, the work remains deeply guarded. Only the tiniest shift of the eye, only the slightest tug at the muscles of the mouth, hints at what John is thinking. Which is why the monumental size proves necessary and revealing. Without the scale, the emotional opacity would win out, but by making him so big, Schneider makes him not a specimen. Sure, he’s formal and quiet and orderly, but the unexpected angles and the peculiar frequencies of his parts make him not just an intellectual event but a social one. Ever so hesitatingly, the subject reveals himself as a personality distinct from the artist.

That can’t be said of the large (36x29) or even larger (60x48) close-ups of faces whose titles bear the names of their sitters. John and Telma, Shirley, Peyton, Helen and Vince all suggest that their dermatologist is worried about their getting too much sun. Their eyes stare vacantly, their expressions seem stripped of affect; they all look as if they’d just turned over the same tarot card or missed the same night’s sleep. In a word, they’re alike. And that’s because Schneider has fit them all into the same mold of technique and composition. Overly lit or barely lit, open or closed, the eyes are always prominent; the skin is invariably mottled; the face always fills the frame; and the expressions are always enigmatic. I wonder whether Schneider makes his models recite the same lines from Dante before taking their pictures.

Schneider’s hand prints, by contrast, hold up as vital and expressive, indications if not of outright personality then of the ineluctable differences among people. His technique is to apply each hand directly to unexposed negative film. Where the hand touches the film, a sparkling dark impression is left behind; where parts of the hand haven’t touched it, a luminous outline appears. And whereas the single-image portraits remain as unyieldingly identical as Buckingham Palace guards, the hands are constantly changing. No two press the film in the same pattern, no fingers splay with the same overall design. And unlike the head shots, the hands aren’t just cadaverous, they’re also playful. They can look as if they were lying on an autopsy table, but they just as often appear to be waving.

"Gary Schneider: Portraits"

At the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, through June 13.

"Gary Schneider: Head to Head"

At Howard Yezerski Galley,14 Newbury Street, Boston, through April 16.