FROM THE CURATOR
Jo Farrell, ARTworkSF

Photographer Lynn Friedman in the series "Private Spaces", captures her experiences while living in Portugal on a Fulbright Fellowship. "I saw children everywhere with banal expressions, seeming to conceal their true selves. I look at these faces and wonder how they will be shaped by the influences of their culture, parents, and formative experiences." Eric Volpe's industrial details "aims for eloquence in illuminating the beauty of things and places ordinarily overlooked. It focuses on the forms and textures of light and surface found in abandoned places, and the inevitable reclaiming of human construction by chaos. Using the large-format view camera enables a precise recording of textural detail and palette." The work of photographer, Jo Farrell captures the vibrance of cultures all too often endangered by modernization. This series, shown at the Hotel Triton is from the streets of Cuba in 2002. "My photographic projects are more cultural / anthropological studies. I welcome and embrace change but we are already in danger of becoming homogenized, carbon copies, unless we hold onto our culture and traditions." In the series "States of Mind," Ann Simms seeks to "create images that invite multiple meanings. I am interested in offering possibilities, not in directing the viewer. I am interested in the layering of experience &meaning, in juxtapositions, and in discovering through the lens the more that is there, beyond conscious intent to what is unseen but there nonetheless." Jeff Codori's nudes are almost abstract details that question reality. "The images are most successful when the viewer scratches his or her head and shrugs and asks their friends just what the hell they're looking at... one person, two? Is that a navel? If it is, then what is THAT? And so forth." Photographer Shelia Ryan uses the unique Kallitype printing, an alternative photographic process that can give light brown hues to a black and white image by varying the developer and the fixer. Dusty Cox is inspired by Stanley Kubrick's final film "Eyes Wide Shut" and the juxtaposition of the visual and oral in our reality. "Images of women---- and those who dress and act like them -----provide the perfect conduit to convey music to the eye. Imagine a world without music and women." David Verba travels off rural highways to capture the abandoned American West photographing empty buildings and cars. "... these scenes appear to exist as moments in time taken out of context. Although their end has come and gone, there is a distinct impression of timelessness." Fima Gelman editorial photographs celebrate the human body. "Anyone can take a picture of a beautiful woman. Few photographers can create an environment that allows for openness in expressing feelings, a connection, an emotion or tell a story by imagery working with a model." In Nicholas Smith's Urban Reflections he captures "subjects that most people take for granted--and present them in a different view. I try to frame my images in a way that challenges the viewer to see them in a new, unexpected way. They become striking, almost abstract." Rich St. Cyr's City Abstracts capture "beauty though simple abstraction, in the same way that Japanese printmaking can capture the elegance of nature with just a few brushstrokes. Walking down a city street, and something will catch my eye. A curve, a smile, a texture." Lois Llewellyn uses the experimental process solarization, made famous by Man Ray and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy. "The process can be strictly controlled as to timing and intensity, or it can be an entirely serendipitous procedure. In any case, what happens is that the print, if it is positive, seems to turn itself inside out in the process of becoming negative." Joe Sobiesiak's series of Rio Vista cemetery details use texture and contrast to capture "parts of things." "In my life, I tend to go for contrast too the hot spots and dark spaces attract me. Like my printing, my thinking might be a little contrasty too. So I guess the old saying, “life imitates art” or is it, “art imitates life”.... Whichever way one says it, my printing and shooting imitate me." The photographs of photographer John McCarthy have an “architectural or geometric style-showing well known places in a fresh way without distorting the qualities that draw people to them in the first place.” AnneKarin Glass photographs from Guatemala “tell you about shifting foundations, earthquakes, and volcanoes, the arbitrary undoing of human endeavor. Texture asks for monochrome.  The work of Gilbert Chang is from a series taken in China 2004 “urban image fragments that I captured or that captured me during my trips to Shanghai.”

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