Art FROM THE LIGHTHOUSE

Her students at SMU are convinced that she’s Lily Tomlin’s twin, and most of the time Debora Hunter seems willing to play the part. She talks compulsively about photography, her own and everyone else’s, all the while apologizing for being such a jabberer. “I must be boring you to death,” she’ll say, and before you have a chance to protest there’s another print on the table or another slide in the projector. Her little “raps,” as she calls them, are punctuated by gasps and laughter, as though her remarks came as a complete surprise to her, and the longer she talks the more animated she becomes. Body ticking back and forth like a metronome, hands jabbing rapidly at the walls and ceiling.

But there is nothing kooky about her work, no bizarre subject matter or startling technical experiments. Adjectives such as “straightforward” and “traditional” come to mind immediately, except they don’t really describe a series like “Juvenilia,” a group of nude self-portraits juxtaposed with innocuous childhood snapshots. In one she is posing like a Playmate of the Month, yet with heavy makeup and a theatrical squint that creates an amusing parodic effect. In another she is reclining pensively on her elbow, the kind of soft shot that is usually accompanied by a quote from Gibran or Rod McKuen. The entire series is emphatically sexual but playfully so, an expression of a light-hearted narcissism.

“Juvenilia was a conscious attempt to break away from some of the more formal concerns of photography,” Debora explains, in a voice more deliberate than usual. “I was just tired of thinking constantly in terms of line and composition. I wanted to be more direct and personal. Of course some people think those photographs are too personal and wonder how I can show them in public. All I can say is that they don’t seem that daring to me. They’re about the past and sexual identity and changing self-images, familiar concerns for most women. I mean, there’s really nothing unique about my life.”

When the “Juvenilia” series was shown at the D. W. Co-op last spring, the place was temporarily overrun with salesmen and other business types eager for a peek at some sensationally erotic photographs. “I’m afraid I disappointed them,” Debora says lightly. But if the show frustrated the Penthouse crowd, it did a lot to establish her as a “feminist photographer,” a label that makes her wince.

“I’ve spent years thinking about feminine identity, right down to how I should dress and what kind of toothpaste I should use. That’s what girls do, right? Well, I’m no longer obsessed with that subject, not that I don’t have a great deal of sympathy for the women’s movement. But as an artist I’ve gone beyond it. I’m moving in different directions now. Gosh, I’ve even started taking pictures of men.”

Another of the new directions, oddly enough, is a return to the kind of formal concerns she had previously rejected. She started out as an English major at Northwestern and admits that it wasn’t until her senior year that she knew an f-stop from a split infinitive. She worked briefly as an assistant to a fashion photographer and had a small free-lance business on the side. Then in 1974 she went off to the Rhode Island School of Design to study with Aaron Siskind, the father of modern abstract photography. Although in her own work subject matter is rarely subordinate to the effects of design, it shows an abstractionist’s concern with composition, with relationships among shapes and the play of light and shadow. In many of her photographs one finds a tiny wedge of light that directs the eye and draws the various sections of the composition together.

“I picked that up from reading Virginia Woolfs To the Lighthouse,” Debora notes. “I loved the novel and wanted to try to incorporate some of its qualities into my own work. So I suppose I wouldn’t mind being called a formalist, provided the word means something more than preoccupation with technique. You know, I used to think that Siskind’s work was very cold and impersonal. ’I’m not going to do that,’ I told myself. Now I find it extremely warm. It vibrates with humanity. 1 wouldn’t mind taking ’beautiful photographs’ like his. Just goes to show you.”

The dominant quality in much of Deb-ora’s work is stillness, a profound quiet coupled with a suggestion of mystery, of a story untold. This comes partly from her use of infrared film, which tends to give her subjects a dreamy, other-worldly quality, and partly, no doubt, from the influence of another of her teachers, Harry Callahan, whose people often appear lost in their own private worlds. Yet Debora’s best photographs could hardly be called derivative. Hers is a world of subtle ironies and contradictions where people seem at once innocent and knowing, sexual and cold, beautiful yet remote. And if her latest work is less aggressive than “Juvenilia,” in its own way it is just as personal.

“In the past I was concerned mainly with personal statement. All the people in my photographs were substitutes for me. For some reason I needed that one-to-one relationship in order to work. Now I’m more detached. I can locate myself in other contexts. Maybe I”m just fantasizing better. Anyway, I don’t need a double.”

And where will this new detachment take her?

“Who knows,” she laughs. “Right now I’m concerned with taking photographs I haven’t seen by other people. But I don’t want to bore you with all that.”