Gallery Photographers
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October 8 - November 2, 2008
Peter Marr picked his favorite
photos of the show
All images copyright by the individual photographers
Bill, one of the gallery’s founding partners, has given us a
truly inspiring exhibition of prints that are exquisite in their content and
presentation. Although they
are grouped so that they represent four separate themes, it is apparent that the
common theme running through his images, is an expression of Bill’s true self,
an inner response to the World around him.
Bill is a wonderful artistic observer and interpreter of the beauty of
the World around us, and he has the marvelous ability to successfully
communicate this to the viewer.
I just love the serenity, quietness and beauty in his images, especially
so in his maritime scapes. Such
qualities are also very evident in the intricate delicacy of the “Early Snow on
Aspens”, and his landscapes that go from the realistic to the near abstract. Of
all of Bill’s exceptional prints, I have chosen one of my favorites to comment
further on, namely, “Sea and Sky”. Here we can see the artist’s love of the photographic
landscape, and his love for the subject matter.
Although we only see light reflected from the landscape, and the
landscape is never the same twice, we see in this image a fleeting moment that
is captivating and inspiring, expressing the passage of time across the
landscape with serene eloquence. We
see a spectacular collection of shapes and textures playing against one another,
even in the delicate traceries of
the clouds in the sky. The
perpetual movement of the waves, so beautifully captured by the light caressing
them, enhances the ethereal quality of the scene, and gives a wonderful sense of
harmony with the gentle surf and the multitude of small structures in the
sparkly sand. This lovely image is
filled with quiet emotion, conveying to the viewer a magical moment when the
artist encountered nature, and captured for us such a serene and very moving
image. Morning Sun The East Gallery has an outstanding, poignant
exhibition by Nancy Guzauski of haunting scenes from abandoned
insane asylums. Her
graphic memorable images of broken down facilities, of rust, decay
and isolation, powerfully symbolize the similar breakdowns, erosion
and trauma in the minds of the mentally ill patients, who once were
forced to exist, but not “live”, in these institutions.
The images of the rusting iron beds with their cold metal
springs and rotting thin mattresses in particular, bring a high
degree of sadness and disillusionment, that such asylums, even when
they were new and “habitable”, were places of abuse, of negativity,
of sadness and of anger.
I use the latter word to sum up ones’ feelings of why mentally ill
patients were abandoned and mis-treated
long term in these
institutions, with little hope of re-entering “normal” society, just
left to rot and rust like the facilities that we see in Nancy’s
dramatic and intense images.
Maybe the rays of light so beautifully captured in her
“Morning Sun”, can lead us to believe that such insane asylums are
no longer with us, and that the mentally ill are now cared for in
more humane facilities, and that these tragic people are given the
love, respect and dignity that they surely deserve.
All of us should give our sincere thanks and admiration to Hope
I particularly loved the four vignettes of life in La Habana, | ||||||||||
Image City Photography Gallery ♦ 722 University Avenue ♦ Rochester, NY 14607 ♦ 585.271.2540 In the heart of ARTWalk in the Neighborhood of the Arts |