Sunday reception for photography show at Kehler Liddell

Kehler Liddell Gallery
873 Whalley Ave., New Haven, (203) 389-9555
Seven: An Exhibition by Seven Photographers
Oct. 13—Nov. 13, 2011.
Opening Reception: Sun., Oct. 16, 3—6 p.m.

Press release

Kehler Liddell Gallery is pleased to present Seven, a group show by seven photographic artists. Featuring the work of Rod Cook, Matthew Garrett, Andrew Hogan, Keith Johnson, Hank Paper, Alan Shulik, and Marjorie Wolfe, this unique exhibition is a testament to the diversity of styles and esthetics within the photographic medium. The diverse methods used by the seven artists include Platinum palladium process, multiple image printing and photojournalism.

Rod Cookʼs photographs offer rare moments of surreal beauty. Each image is a glimpse into an intimate gesture—sometimes haunting, other times reminiscent of a comforting memory. Using the Platinum/Palladium process—a technical process in which a light sensitive emulsion is coated directly on the surface of a sheet of paper—Cookʼs photographs exhibit a stunning, soft luminosity that evoke a deep emotional response within the viewer.

Matthew Garrett is a photographer who extracts uncanny and strange images from urban and suburban environments. His photographs isolate murmurs from the rhythms of our daily surroundings. Garrett transforms familiar spaces into mysterious, meditative spaces. His compositions play with light intensity and utilize spatial juxtapositions to create signature, dramatic visual effects.

Andrew Hogan's photographs capture fleeting moments of emotion that are indefinable by words alone: Mere glimpses or gestures that can suggest an entire life story. His photographs reveal fleeting moments of personal history and their underlying emotions that are undiminished by time. Hogan captures these powerful emotional stories in their beauty and mystery. His images uncover what is hidden in our everyday lives, and show how time and distance affect our personal realities and perceptions.

Keith Johnson makes photographs that are an investigation of extended imagery. By printing multiple images on a single piece of paper, Johnson is able to push the photograph beyond the single print, into a grid work that creates new frames and connections between images. The juxtaposition of multiple pictures steers the viewerʼs focus to the idea of the image—toward the imageʼs string of potential suggested by layers of graphic detail.

Hank Paperʼs photographs are from a series entitled “Island Life.” Paper shoots in an intuitive, photojournalistic style that allows the true nature of his subjects to be seen, often in juxtaposition with their absurd nature. Paperʼs photographs can be viewed as testimonies of people in their everyday life. However, his often humorous images do more than just expose the ordinary. They puncture the viewerʼs preconceived notions of his fellow man by revealing his subjects in unexpected roles and contexts that both surprise and sometimes astonish.

Alan Shulik (see image) paints with the lens of the camera in such a way as to produce abstract-surrealist images that conjure up ethereal, dream-like experiences. The images he will exhibit in this show are landscape photographs depicting the coastlines of Maine and Connecticut. Possessing a quiet, ethereal quality, these images are at once fleeting glances and moments of stillness.

Marjorie Wolfeʼs approach to photography, though simple and direct, reveals a hidden world. Wolfeʼs photographs were all taken at the same pond in Marthaʼs Vineyard, a place that the artist visits often. However, despite familiarity with the location, through Wolfeʼs sensitive visual esthetic, she is able to use the camera to expose the subtle contrasts around her—near and far, old and young, clamor and peace.

Erector Square: Andrew Hogan

City-Wide Open Studios
50 Orange St., New Haven, (203) 772-2709
Erector Square: Andrew Hogan
Oct. 14, 2007.

The walls and floor of Andrew Hogan's studio were lined with photographic prints. The images along the floor were black and white, from film. All the color work was digital—shot with a digital camera and printed digitally. Hogan has a darkroom in his studio but hasn't been using it lately.

When shooting digitally, he said, "it's like having color film in the camera. I can only see color. But when I have film in the camera, irrationally, I can only see black and white."

There are large composite prints of nine images—these he farms out for printing—individual prints and paired images. One of the composites contains nine images, each with a directional motif: urban landscapes with arrows on the street, and interiors such as one of an open door with a sign on it reading "Not an Exit" while the light above the door frame states "Exit." (The explanation: when the door is closed, the signs would be on opposite sides.)

Another composite depicts a wooded scene with stacked cut wood in the sunlit forest. These shots were taken on Water Authority land near the Westville/Orange border, Hogan said. To maintain a healthy forest, a forester for the Water Authority picks trees that can be cut to thin the forest. The public can apply for permits to cut and clear the wood.

"We were walking around in there and came upon it and it was like finding Stonehenge, incredibly striking," Hogan told me. "The first time I came upon it, the light wasn't working. I brought the kids back the following weekend—a forced march into there—and the light was just right."

Flipping through a portfolio he had on hand, Hogan said the work he showed in last year's CWOS was all autobiographical. The paired works in this show are also autobiographical, after a fashion. Hogan told me his daughter Alessandra clued him in that he could take pictures with his cellphone. Each print paired an image Hogan shot with his phone with one shot by Rachel Lovins, the woman he's seeing. They take images and send them back and forth.

"I like the conversational aspect and I like the low grade aspect of them, and the immediacy," said Hogan. "And she took all the better ones!"

Most of the images are street photography or keenly observed interiors. There are domestic moments, public gatherings—including an antiwar march in Washington, D.C. from this past March—and intimate moments. In one such image, a bouquet of cream-colored roses burst out of a vase on a dining room table in the foreground. It catches the eye first. But in the background, a naked woman deep beyond the short depth of field washes dishes in the kitchen.

"I love the idea of glimpses. It's what photography is there for, to catch the glimpses in your peripheral vision," said Hogan.

"My ultimate goal is that somebody will look at that and think 'I know what that person is thinking.' Emotional content for me is everything, much more than the formalistic aspect of color," said Hogan. "I want you to be able to reach in there and feel something. That there's something there that clicks with you."