To our 2011 exhibiting artists, many thanks for a great year!
2011 Exhibiting Artists (in rows top to bottom, left to right) Shelby Lee Adams, Nandita Raman, Allison Leach, Howard Saunders, Laura Radwell, Amy Madden, Tomoko Daido, Stefanie Klavens, Gordon Stettinius, Jeff Jacobson, Bojune Kwon Michael Hunold, Gary Duehr, Meg Birnbaum Susan Barnett, Robert Kalman, Linette Miller, Susan deWitt
PHOTOBOOKS!!2011
Photographers and Photobooks
November 18 to December 18, 2011
Reception: Saturday, November 19 6-8pm
Above: photobooks by best of show artists:
Jonathan Lipkin, Sara Macel, Amanda Penecale and David Morris Cunningham.
The self-published photobook provides an extraordinary opportunity for photographers to present their work directly to the public. The photobook itself can be a work of art. The Davis Orton Gallery is pleased to present twenty outstanding photobooks selected through an international photobook competition. Photographs by four “best of show” artists will also be exhibited.
All photobooks and prints will be available for sale during exhibition and all books will be available for the next year in the Photobook 2011 Catalog.
20 Artists, Photobooks and Websites
Khamra Obscura by Jon Michael Anzalone
Conversations with Dan McNulty in Jersey City by Andrew Bovasso
Remembrance of Things Present by David Morris Cunningham (BOS)
Cleavage by Bethany Fancher
Light Source by Deena Feinberg
The Dancer as the Invisible Girl by Ellen Feldman
Urban Woods by Dorothy Gantenbein
Nocturnes by Frank Gimpaya
Looking Up by Michael Hunold
House Portrait: Harrison Inside by Miki Iwamura
Natural History by Nikki Johnson
Livingston County by Jonathan Lipkin (BOS)
May the Road Rise to Meet You by Sara Macel (BOS)
Food by Mary Parisi
Trust in Passing Hours by Amanda Penecale (BOS)
I Am Because We Are: African Wisdom in Image and Proverb by Betty Press
Stations of the Scale by Andrea Rosenthal
Areth: An Architectural Atlas by Adam Ryder
Postcards from an Irish Holiday by Orla Sloyan
The Boston Years: The Music Scene in Photographs by Cathy Vanaria.
*A project from Mexico, Mexico in Your Senses, initiated by photographer Willy Sousa,
that resulted in both a book and an international exhibition, will also be exhibited.
PHOTOBOOK 2011 CatalogThe PHOTOBOOK 2011 Catalog will remain on the gallery site for one year.
Street Photography / Surveillance
October 14 to November 13, 2011
Reception: Saturday, October 15, 6-8 pm
Tomoko Daido
Garbage Man, 7″x7″, silver gelatin print, Tomoko Daido
Bojune Kwon
The Neurosis in the City 6 (Brooklyn Bridge) 42″ x 28″, pigment print by Bojune Kwon
With Portfolios by Gary Duehr and Susan A. Barnett
CCTV1 from series Closed Circuit 17″ x 22″ pigment print on watercolor paper by Gary Duehr
The Tree from series Not In Your Face, 12″x18″, pigment print by Susan A. Barnett
About the Artists and Their Work
Tomoko Daido discovers suspicious and mysterious sites as she walks for hours around the city. Whether in the US or Japan, her black and white images, made with both a medium format camera and a plastic camera, suggest a parallel world to the everyday we inhabit. For Tomoko, there is a thrill and an instantaneous response to each find. This is followed by contemplation through the slow photographic process of the darkroom. “The fixed image becomes an interface between what was there and my perception of what was there.” (photograph: “Feliz”, 7″x7″, silver gelatin print by Tomoko Daido)
Bio
Born in Japan, Tomoko Daido lives and works in New York City. She is a member of the photographers’ group, 35MINUTESMAN, and has exhibited at Geoffrey Young Gallery in Great Barrington, Fordham University’s Center Gallery and APS Studio 35 in Tokyo. Tomoko’s book, White Elephant (2007) was selected for inclusion in PHOTOBOOK!!2010, an exhibition of twenty outstanding photobooks at the Davis Orton Gallery in 2010.
Bojune Kwon, in his series, Neurosis, restructures reality to present the overwhelming impact of the city. Each photograph in this series, digitally built from hundreds of individual exposures, is a location familiar to most as an iconic view of New York but this time seen through the eyes of a newcomer, adjusting to a very fast paced, impersonal world. “In spite of the flood of people that inhabit the city, I am often struck by the difficulty of making real connections with others.”
Bio: Bojune Kwon is a fine arts and commercial photographer living and working in New York City. Kwon, whose fine arts work in black & white and color centers on the built environment, has received several international awards for his images including from the Sappi/Magno Intensity Photographic Competition and the Epson International Photographic Pano (Panoramic) Awards. Born in Korea, Bojune studied photography at Seoul’s Kyung-Il University and holds a Masters degree from New York City’s School of Visual Arts in digital photography. (photograph: “The Neurosis in the City 1″ 42″ x 28” [and other sizes] by Bojune Kwon)
Gary Duehr‘s series, “Closed Circuit” is based on closed circuit television (CCTV) from anonymous global sources, “Closed Circuit” examines the ubiquitous state of Big Brother’s watchful eye. Just as the footage—taken from hotels and airports and parking lots and elevators—possesses an air of anonymity, so do the subjects, who are reduced to faceless projections. The closer the CCTV zooms in, the less concrete information remains. Shadowy bodies float through glaring spaces: they could be anyone doing anything, any where at any time. Duehr points out, “The very process of singling them out, sometimes with a red target for emphasis, gives their mundane behavior a sinister tint. Recorded, ID’d, processed. tagged. Who can keep their heads above the deluge?” (photograph: CCTV-2 from Closed Circuit by Gary Duehr. Pigment prints on watercolor paper, 17 ” x 22 “)
Bio In 2007 Gary Duehr was chosen as a Best Emerging Artist in New England by the International Association of Art Critics. In 2003 Duehr received an Artist Grant in photography from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and his work has been featured in museums and galleries including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Exit Art, Umbrella Arts, and New York Arts, New York, NY; Gallery Tsubaki, Tokyo, Japan; SKC Gallery, Belgrade, Yugoslavia; and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba. Past awards include grants from the LEF Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. His public artworks include a photo installation funded by the Visible Republic program of New England Foundation for the Arts, and a commission from the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority) for a permanent photo installation at North Station. Duehr has written about the arts for journals including ArtScope, Art New England, Art on Paper, Communication Arts, Frieze, and Public Culture.
Susan A. Barnett started her project, “Not In Your Face”, as a dialogue with the viewer about judgment… how we make assumptions and decisions based upon what people wear, their choices in accessories and style considerations. Each of her subjects reveal parts of themselves that advertise their hopes, ideals, likes, dislikes, political views and personal mantras.While in each image, the t-shirt is starkly evident, these photographs are not about the t-shirt per se but about identity, validation and perception. In shooting from the back, Barnett challenges expectations about the portrait as in image of the face with equally revealing portraits of individuals through not only the message on the shirt but body type, dress and demeanor. (photograph: I’m Muslim from Not in Your Face, 18″ x 12″ pigment print by Susan A. Barnett.)
Bio: Susan A. Barnett has exhibited her work at, among others, Clampart Gallery, Griffin Museum of Photography, New York Photo Festival, Capital One Corporate Gallery , Houston Center for Fine Art Photography, Philadelphia University of the Arts Gallery, Pacific Center NW, and Espace Dupon. Her series “Not In Your Face” has been seen in Lensculture, Popular Photography Magazine, Lenscratch, Social documentary.net, Heinz Foundation vimeo, Pittsburgh Tribune, PDN, Oitzarisme, Fotovisura, Artslant, and Projekt 30. “Not In Your Face” has won awards from Photo Review , IPA, Px3, Pollux awards, WPGA, Texas Photographic Society, Photo World Annual Awards, Critical Mass, Hey Hot Shot Contender and New York Photo Festival. The book “Not In Your Face” will be published in 2012 from the Silas Finch Foundation, New York.
Exhibition: September 9 to October 9, 2011
Reception: Saturday, September 10, 6-8 pm
Book Signing: Saturday, October 1, 6-8 pm
“salt & truth” by Shelby Lee Adams, Candela Books, 2011
Shelby Lee Adams, photographer
salt & truth
Black and white photographs from Shelby Lee Adams’ new book “salt & truth” Candela Press, 2011 – to be released October 2011 and Shelby’s recent color work.
“It is the total inclusive spirit of the mountaineer living in the hollers that motivates and interests me…..The culture is very multi-layered in expressing the fullness of life.”
Robbie and Tyler on Wrecker, 2003 © Shelby Lee Adams
Steve and Francis © Shelby Lee Adams
Salt & Truth is the fourth book from photographer Shelby Lee Adams. A collection of 80 new photographs, taken over the past eight years and which continue a project the artist has been working on now for over 30 years. Together these powerful images of the hollow dwellers of eastern Kentucky, represent a singular access to a world that is historically not very trusting of outsiders, by a photographer who is widely recognized as a master of the medium.
Using multiple strobes and a large format camera, Adams achieves both a special quality of light and a depth of field that keeps everything in focus. Adams’s composition – marked by sharp division of space and clarity of detail – places the viewer in the role of omniscient visitor to this otherwise private moment – juxtaposing both claustrophobic familial closeness and the wide open space of the landscape itself. Adams himself, having grown up in Kentucky and familiar with the mountain culture, is both an insider and an outside observer – a dichotomy the documentary photographer must frequently confront.
Shelby Lee Adams bio
Shelby Lee Adams was born in 1950 in the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky. A photographer renowned for his environmental portraiture, Appalachia is not only Adams’s birthplace, but the subject of his photographs as well. Adams was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010. His work has been featured in three monographs: Appalachian Portraits (1993), Appalachian Legacy (1998), andAppalachian Lives (2003).
Adams’ photographs are represented in many major permanent collections; including the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; International Center of Photography, New York, New York; Musee De L’Elysee Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Time Life Collection, Rockefeller Center, New York, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York.
(above :Lloyd Deane and Grandbaby © Shelby Lee Adams)
August 5 to September 4, 2011
Jeff Jacobson, photographer
Melting Point and The Last Roll
Photographs from Jeff’s book “Melting Point” Nazraeli Press, 2006 and his latest series/upcoming book, “The Last Roll”
Jeff Jacobson’s photographs are disorienting, mysterious and beautiful. Composed in the camera with no additional manipulation, they pull us in to an unreal world that emerges from the every day.
From “Melting Point”
Shanghai, China, 2002, 17″ x 22″ by Jeff Jacobson Los Angeles, California, 1993, 40″ x 60″ by Jeff Jacobson
Melting Point
In his book, Melting Point (Nazraeli Press, 2006), Jacobson writes of over 20 years observations of what he describes as “a meltdown period, when old norms of politics, religion and even photography are changing…. In working from the paradox of a curious melding of beauty and fear these photographs emerged.” Of Melting Point, Mark Feeney in the Boston Globe writes: “For all his theatricality, Jacobson is as much realist as expressionist. In strictly visual terms, these images are highly arresting. Seen also in technical terms, they become objects of wonder.”
From “The Last Roll”
Untitled, from The Last Roll, 17 x 22″ by Jeff Jacobson
Untitled, from The Last Roll, 17 x 22″ by Jeff Jacobson
The Last Roll
In 2004, Jeff Jacobson was diagnosed with lymphoma. After each chemo session, he and his wife, Marnie Andrews, would retreat to their home in the Catskills from their apartment in New York. By 2005 they gave up their apartment and moved to the mountains, permanently. As Jeff recovered, “my photographic universe expanded to the yard, the street, the river and into Woodstock.” In 2006, Kodak announced it had discontinued the film, Kodachrome, that Jeff had used throughout his career. He purchased and stored as much film as he could.
“Coming to the twin realizations that my time on the planet and my supply of film are both finite had a liberating effect on me.” Since then, Jeff has concentrated on what he holds most dear: his family, home and the earth. The Last Roll is a project that is just about complete and will be the content of his next book. Many of the images from this series will be seen for the first time at the Davis Orton Gallery.
Jeff Jacobson bio
Jeff Jacobson trained as a lawyer and practiced as an ACLU attorney in the South in the early 70’s. It was at that time that his interest in photography grew as he photographed southern jails and rural areas. After completing a workshop with Charles Harbutt in 1974, Jacobson quit the law and devoted all his energies to photography. By 1976 he was photographing in color and experimenting with strobes and long exposures, a now familiar technique that he pioneered.
Jeff’s photographs are in the permanent collections of many museums in the United States and Europe including: the Whitney Museum of American Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis MN, George Eastman House, Rochester NY and the Smithsonian Institute. His work has been published in magazines including: The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, Time, Geo, Stern and Life. His photographs have been published in two monographs: My Fellow Americans, University of New Mexico Press (1991) and Melting Point, Nazraeli Press (2006). Jacobson was a Magnum photographer from 1978-1981. He left Magnum to help found Archive Pictures. He has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Jeff Jacobson is a highly respected teacher. He has taught workshops at the International Center for Photography, Anderson Ranch, and The Center for Photography at Woodstock; he also offers private intensive workshops from his home in the Catskills.
June 24 to July 31, 2011
Reception: Saturday, June 25 6-8pm
Closing Reception: Saturday, July 30, 5-8pm
Theaters and the Theatrical
Stefanie Klavens, photography
“The Art of the Movie Theater: A Disappearing American Tradition”
Nandita Raman, photography
“Cinema Play House” – Old Cinemas (built 1930’s to 60’s) in India
PortfolioX2 photographers
An innovative exhibition format that combines electronic and hands-on portfolio presentations. See “PortfolioX2 Submissions” for all the information. Next deadline: August 31: Street Photography and Surveillance.
About the Artists and the Work
Stefanie Klavens
During Hollywood’s golden age nearly every American city and town had its own movie palace. Designed in a wide range of flamboyant architectural styles, America’s historic theaters have entertained millions, first as vaudeville houses and later as movie theaters. After WWII, many downtown palaces closed. Some architectural treasures have been saved, finding new life as performing arts centers, but most are lost forever.
“My attachment to these theaters is both artistic and personal. I’ve had a long-held interest in 20th-century American popular culture and, growing up in Baltimore, I went to the Senator, a 900 seat theater built in 1939. Not surprisingly, it was among the first venues I photographed.”
From the ornate city palace to the intimate small-town movie house, Klavens strives to record this rapidly vanishing era in American social history using long exposures in interiors and the light at dusk for exteriors to bring the beauty of these theaters to life.
Bio
Boston-based photographer Stefanie Klavens’ recent solo exhibits include the National Heritage Museum, Lexington, MA and New England Institute of Art, Brookline, MA. She has exhibited at the Judi Rotenberg Gallery, Photographic Resource Center, Boston Center for the Arts, and the Danforth Museum. Her work has appeared in Yankee Magazine, the Boston Globe, and on the cover of Harper’s Magazine.
A Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Grant finalist, Klavens received her BFA and Fifth Year Certificate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.
Nandita Raman
India has a long association with cinema. The first indian feature film was made in 1899. Today the country is one of the largest film producers, making more than a thousand films a year, for an audience of 3.6 billion.
Nandita Raman’s mother’s family owned the first talkies cinema in her hometown, Varanasi, India. Most of the single screen theaters that were built were designed by the owners themselves. Some were designed practically, while others provided an opportunity for owners to express their fancies. In the 1990’s, when home video became popular in India, many theaters including Raman’s family’s closed down. While cinema halls are coming back across India, they are standardized multiplexes.
Raman photographs the old cinema halls in India built between 1930 and 1960. She is interested in the idiosyncrasies that exist in the cinema spaces. “These theaters seemed to contain cues to the psyche of the people who built and who occupy them. It is these cues that I’m interested in; manifestations of interaction between the space and the people, over time.”
Bio
Nandita Raman is a reciepient of the Sarai Independent study Fellowship ’06 and the Daylight/ CDS Project Prize, 2010. She has exhibited in India and the United States, most recently atArtpost in South Bend, Indiana. This Spring the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame acquired an edition of the entire series of her Cinema Play House photographs. They will be exhibited at the Snite Museum, Fall 2011. Nandita has published in Moment, Elle India, Flair Italy, Outlook, and Timeout Delhi. Raman, born in Varanasi, India, comes from a graphic design and filmmaking background and is currently pursuing MFA at ICP-Bard in New York City.
Michael Hunold
Michael Hunold photographs are a visual diary of his day-to-day working life as a lamp operator – electrician in the world of motion picture and television production. “I am interested in the life of working people behind the screen and the environment in which illusions are manufactured. My photographs are a private response to the way the production process, especially light and the process of lighting, transform the working spaces (locations, soundstages, sets) and machinery into places and objects of potential beauty and mystery.”
Allison Leach
In this series of photographs, Allison Leach depicts fictitious explorers of her creation who never got anywhere nor found anything. She bases her reenactments on a mixture of actual failed explorers (Scott, Livingstone), amalgamations of incompetent historical expeditions (Franklin Expedition, Donner Party), and fantastical disasters of her own whimsy. “My constructed photographs examine both the hubris of Western exploration and, reflexively, the power of photography itself.”
Allison Leach’s photography has been exhibited in London and New York City, and is represented in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Museum (Washington, D.C.). She has received numerous awards for her commercial portrait work, including publication in several Communication Artsphotography annuals. She has been commissioned byVanity Fair, Time, Fortune, Interview, Esquire, The New York Times Sunday Magazine(among others), and served as a Contributing Photographer for People Magazine for seven years. Leach, who lives and works in upstate New York, is a MARK10 artist of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and has served on the faculty of The Rocky Mountain School of Photography, Missoula, Montana since 2004, where she teaches Studio Lighting and Editorial Portraiture each summer.
May 12 to June 19, 2011
Reception: Saturday, May 14, 6-8 pm
Overlays
Amy Madden, mixed media, “Batik Weeds”
Inspired by both contemporary feminist artists and practitioners of traditional domestic arts, in this series of small works Amy Madden handprints flora onto paper; makes rubbings of textured surfaces, layers and scrapes beeswax, applies washes of color; overlays patterns and forms to define space and finally adds sewing by hand or machine. The intimate size of these paintings, the use of traditional feminine practices such as embroidery and the use of thread, wax and tacks all add to the delicacy and tactility of each piece.
Laura Radwell, photo-based abstracts,
“Impressions of Berlin and Other Works”
Laura Radwell’s attention is drawn to “strangely poignant” variations in color and geometry found in the surface deterioration of common objects. “The work begins when she photographs aspects of the world, for instance corroded metal, textured tree bark, chipping paint, that point to imperfection and impermanence. From these photographs, she creates a palette, layering them as if applying colors from tubes of paint. The images begin to lose their literal quality and are transformed into abstractions that invite the viewer to suspend habitual perception. Something imagined is created out of something real. Radwell’s most recent work is based on her impressions of Berlin, a city she has explored intensely over the past decade. Here her process is also informed by the compelling details of history she finds everywhere.
PortfolioX2
An innovative exhibition format that combines electronic and hands-on portfolio presentations. See “PortfolioX2 Submissions” for all the information. Next deadlines: May 11 and August 31.
AND PortfolioX2: (see images below)
Robert Kalman: photography – Larreynaga
Gordon Stettinius and Terry Brown: photography – Mangini Studio Series
The Davis Orton Gallery introduces a new gallery initiative, portfolioX2 (portfolio times 2) that combines electronic and hands-on portfolio presentations by two photographers. For more information (next deadline: March 23, next theme: “Overlays”) see “PortfolioX2 Submissions“.
Person/Persona: photographs by Meg Birnbaum
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Meg Birnbaum’s ‘Person/Persona’ is a series of diptychs exploring the transformative power of costume-wearing and the creation of alter egos. “When I first started working on this project, I thought that I was simply fascinated with performers performing. But it unwittingly became a positive lesson for me in the infinite ways of finding community and building personal connections.”
Some of the personae are the individual’s original creations; some are familiar historical figures; some exist only on paper; and some only on stage. She found her subjects by attending historical reenactments and performances, talking to friends, and internet searches. Meg invited each person to write a paragraph or two about the chain of events that led to their particular choice of persona and about the impact it has had in their lives. Some people have shared inspiring stories of overcoming very personal struggles, and most feel that costumes have been the bridge to a changed, more fulfilled and happier life.
Bio
Meg Birnbaum is a graphic designer and fine art photographer based in Massachusetts. She has work in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Art, Houston TX, the Lishui Museum of Photography in China, Meditech Corporation, Nicolet College (WI) and the corporate program of the DeCordova Museum. Recent exhibits include: Gallery Tanto Tempo, Kobe, Japan; the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester MA, the Lishui Photography and Culture Festival, Lishui, China. Her series “Corn Dogs and Blue Ribbons” was the inaugural exhibition at the Davis Orton Gallery in 2009. She is represented by Gallery Tanto and Photo-Eye Gallery, Photographer’s Showcase, Santa Fe NM.
Axeman Who Will Be 70 In The Year 2010:
Mixed Media by Howard Saunders[svgallery name=”howardaxeman”]
According to Howard Saunders “On a cold and rainy day on Cape Cod, I had nothing to do, no implements to speak of, no paper upon which to render ideas I didn’t know I had. But there were all these brown paper bags from the Wellfleet Market. And there was a personal history of some kind of artist who was yet to find his voice.”
Thus Axeman Who Will be 70 in the Year 2010 was born on brown paper bags. What started as a hand-made 46″ x 56″ collage became transfigured into a book, a 62 page, full-color illustrated mixed media book, funded with a grant from kickstarter. AxeMan ( Saunders alter ego) makes a fifty-plus year circuitous journey from east to west to east as he hangs around the perimeter of the art world, the cultural revolutions, and in the center of the political arena. The faux memoir form (Saunders does not have a steel head) allows him flights of fancy but stays well within the chronicle of his own life.
Now, his escape/retirement in 2007 from a think tank after thirty years has allowed him to look for a constituency/audience with no parameters other than his imagination and his desire to tell (and draw) a story.
And now, Axeman; the exhibition. Here Saunders has recreated 18″ x 24″ mixed media pieces which started as scans of details from the book. To this he has added (by hand) new text, new drawings, paint and newly collaged elements moving the myth of Axeman to the gallery walls. The phrase ‘repurposed’ has been planted on the work by the literary journal Reconfigurationsof the University of Denver which has also published an electronic version of the entire book.
PortfolioX2: on hdtv and in open portfolio box
Robert Kalman and Gordon Stettinius & Terry Brown
The Davis Orton Gallery introduces a new gallery initiative, portfolioX2 (portfolio times 2) that combines electronic and hands-on portfolio presentations by two photographers. For more information (next deadline: March 23 – next theme: “Overlays”) see “PortfolioX2 Submissions“.