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PHOTOFEST DEMONSTATES FUSION OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND ART
“More than any artistic medium, photography has developed in tandem with technology,” states the co curator of PhotoFest, an exhibit featuring the work of fifteen artists of national and international acclaim. This exhibit will be featured at JRB Art at the Elms (http://www.jrbartgallery.com) from September 5-27, 2008. The Gallery is located in Oklahoma City’s historic Paseo Arts District.
(http://www.thepaseo.com).
In their curator statement, Stone and co-curator Dustin Hamby add, “Photography has been witness to the most rapid changes of our industrialized world. Since its creation, the aesthetic quality of constantly changing chemistry and materials has influenced the art as much as the world it captured. Rather than leave behind these old techniques, contemporary photographers incorporate old and new, and this is what we have captured in our PhotoFest exhibit.” Co-curator Dustin Hamby added, “The lines between darkroom and digital are more blurred than we might think. This blending of old and new is what makes contemporary photography so compelling.”
To demonstrate this curatorial interpretation, JRB Art at The Elms has assembled a portfolio of works from the following outstanding art photographers:
Elena Dorfman graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, in 1988, and now lives in New York and San Francisco. Explorations of identity through portraiture are at the forefront of her work, with the blurred lines between fantasy and reality a continuing theme. The JRB PhotoFest will feature works from Dorfman’s most recent series, Fandomania: Characters & Cosplay. The series explores the world of costume play, a pop-cultural phenomenon exported from Japan, now exploding in the US. The subjects in this series are extreme fans who frequent conventions worldwide, who dress up and live as characters from video games, Japanese manga and anime. A book of the same title has been published by Aperture (http://www.aperture.org).
Steven Katzman is a self-taught photographer who, over the years, has combined his long-time interest in political science with his photographic journey. Like his forerunners, Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, and Dorthea Lange, Katzman presents beautifully crafted, matter-of-fact images of his subjects, but his work goes beyond the parameters of photo-journalism. In 1991, Katzman received a $35,000 corporate grant from Eastman Kodak Professional Photography Division. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and is in numerous museum and corporate collections, and recently had a portfolio of his work purchased by the George Eastman House International Center of Photography (http://www.eastmanhouse.org).
David Michael Kennedy is a fine art photographer living and working in New Mexico. His career spans over 35 years and includes an eighteen-year stint in New York City where he was known as a specialist in photography for the advertising and music industries. Kennedy produced album covers and editorial spreads for artists that include Muddy Waters, Bruce Springsteen, Blondie and Bob Dylan (http://www.bobdylan.com). In 1986, Kennedy moved to northern New Mexico and began documenting the Western Landscape and Native American Culture where he became involved in Native American causes. His photographs of Native Americans and their culture have been exhibited in galleries throughout the world, including his former home of New York.
Ron Tarver has built a successful career in photography over the past 30 years. His work has been published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The inquirer Sunday Magazine, National Geographic, Life, Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and Black and White Magazine. He is co-author of the book, We Were There: Voices of African American Veterans, published by Harper Collins in 2004, which was accompanied by a traveling exhibition that debuted at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. In addition to his work in photojournalism, Tarver has distinguished himself in the field of fine art photography. This year he received an Independence Foundation Fellowship for his most recent work “The World in a Grain of Sand.”
Maggie Taylor (http://www.maggietaylor.com) graduated from Yale University with a BA in philosophy and received an MFA in photography from the University of Florida. For approximately ten years she worked with a camera and film creating still-life images in her studio and garden. In 1996 and 2001 she received State of Florida Individual Artist’s Fellowships. In 1996 Taylor began working digitally, using a scanner in place of a camera. By placing objects directly on the glass top of the scanner she is able to create a unique type of digital image which has some photographic qualities. Books of her work include Maggie Taylor’s Landscape of Dreams, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Solutions Beginning with A.
Jerry Uelsmann received his B.F.A. degree at the Rochester Institute of Technology and his M.S. and M.F.A. at Indiana University. A master printer, Uelsmann produces composite photographs with multiple negatives and extensive darkroom work. He uses up to a dozen enlargers at a time to produce his final images. Uelsmann is a champion of the idea that the final image need not be tied to a single negative, but may be composed of many. He has sought to create allegorical surrealist imagery of the unfathomable. At the age of 33, Uelsmann had his first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (http://www.moma.org). That same year, 1967, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and, in 1972, he received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
Brett Weston (1911-1993), son of celebrated American photographer Edward Weston, is known for his uniqueness of vision through the puristic method of straight photography. Throughout his 60-year career, Weston challenged the boundaries of black and white photography through experimentation with abstraction and recognizable subject matter. Whether he extracted the detailed patterns of mud cracks, or included the distant silhouette of a mountain range, Brett continuously expressed the poignant beauty of his surroundings. Whether photographing an abstract airplane wing or water droplets inches away from his camera, his images seize exhilarating patterns in the natural and man-made world.
(http://www.brettwestonarchive.com).
Loretta Young-Gautier is inspired by the works of Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali, Giorgio de Chirico and Remedios Varo and developed an early fascination with Surrealism. Through multiple exposures, negative sandwiching, combination printing and other techniques, she has created images in both the camera and the darkroom and has recently begun exploring digital manipulation. Sometimes taking weeks to create a single image, her work is produced in a limited edition of hand-printed archival silver gelatin prints and/or carbon-pigment inkjet prints.
Other featured PhotoFest photographers:
Jeff Conley creates handcrafted black and white prints. His subject matter is diverse, from urban landscapes to studies of pristine wilderness.
Mitch Dobrowner, inspired by Minor White and Ansel Adams, creates images that help evoke a sense of how he sees our wonderful planet.
Robert Dohrman has combined industrial landscapes with classical sculpture to create a stunning dialogue.
Ken Rosenthal is a highly collected artist whose work has been featured in the George Eastman House and The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (http://www.npg.si.edu).
Sara Theis shoots travel and documentary work in a square format, often using a Holga “toy” camera to create a dreamy, irregular color.
JRB Art at The Elms, the former home of Nan Sheets which was built in 1920, is located at 2810 North Walker and is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and Sunday 1:00-5:00 p.m. The Gallery website is http://www.jrbartgallery.com. The phone number is 405.528.6336.
Contact:
Joy Reed Belt, Director
JRB Art at The Elms
405-528-6336
http://www.jrbartgallery.com.
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