Still River Editions Gallery
Tuesday, May 10th, 2011A fun exhibition with good friend and printer Mark Savoia. We are 2011 CT Commission on Culture and Tourism fellows.
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Keith Johnson Photographs |
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Archive for the ‘Exhibitions’ CategoryStill River Editions GalleryTuesday, May 10th, 2011A fun exhibition with good friend and printer Mark Savoia. We are 2011 CT Commission on Culture and Tourism fellows. Recent Work at Kehler Liddell GalleryMonday, October 11th, 2010Exhibition at Panopticon GalleryMonday, October 11th, 2010CWOSThursday, September 23rd, 2010Erector Square 315 Peck Street Bldg. 5 3rd Floor New Haven, CT City Wide-Open Studios Earth & Sky ExhibitionMonday, August 16th, 2010Aerial Photographs Opening September 1 at Mercy Gallery at Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, CT is a four person show including my piece Aerial Photographs, and work by John Mullin, Leila Daw, and Susan Scott. Callahan at the MFA BostonFriday, January 1st, 2010We went to see the Callahan show of about 50 pictures at the MFA yesterday. It was a perfect way to close out (visually) 2009. Becky suggested that Callahan had quite an influence on my work: GUILTY. A couple of pictures stood out: a woman on the street in Chicago in a very light green coat and hat probably from the early 50s; a four panel grid of tree limbs looking up form Atlanta in 1993. Marvelous pictures. Yes, Harry was (remains) quite an influence. Robert Frank at the MetropolitanFriday, November 27th, 2009I was a tad reluctant to go to the Met Wednesday; haven’t we seen enough of The Americans already? I had never seen its entirety as an exhibition with some rather large prints laid out as in the book through 5 or 6 rooms. I have to say the sequence had never read as clearly nor as succinctly as it does that way. The Americans is truly a book in my mind, but having known the work for 40 years it remains brilliant, ground-breaking, and formative for me and my photography. There were always some pictures that were less resonant, particularly from the Montana timeframe, but yesterday I was completely satisfied. Furthermore the art of sequencing photographs (which I have be long steeped in-thanks, Nathan-makes the meanings deeper and more satisfying. I learned some stuff, yet again. Happy Thanksgiving. Griffin MuseumWednesday, September 16th, 2009New Topographics ReduxThursday, July 2nd, 2009for the second time in 34 years I spent some time at the New Topographics show at GEH. the house has re-hung the seminal show from 1975 not in the original gallery but the adjacent one, 100 prints from the original exhibition. Talk about a personal history of photography. I distictly remember having a railing experience about Hank Wessel’s work for at least an hour as Paul Hester and I drove back to Providence from Rochester. How impactful the show became when my generation began to teach the edicts of the show and then those students carried on the tradition. My feelings have changed about the work in the show over the years and now taking a class there yeaterday heard my speaking in reverential terms about the work. True, photography has moved along and different ideas are embraced now, and Rick Hock said “it was no big deal”, it still remains a seminal work. I am delighted to spen time with it. Exhibition TrifectaMonday, June 15th, 2009This coming fall I will be having three concurrent exhibitions in Boston: Panopticon Gallery in Kenmore Square at the Hotel Commonwealth will show recent Grids September 16-November 8, 2009; New England School of Photography in Kenmore square as well will show Extended Landscapes August 24-October 2, 2009; and the Griffin Museum in Winchester, MA will show Suite Niagara August 27-October 5, 2009. Status UpdateTuesday, April 21st, 2009Syntax at PRCSunday, April 5th, 2009Syntax, a fine show curated by Leslie K. Brown, is an intelligent, well selected show of photographers working on the edge of the bubble using photography to often talk about photography. Luke Strosnider has his book of New Ansel Adams Landscapes which are the histograms of famous Adams landscapes presented to be viewed as reseen landscapes, they are quite wonderful. Benno Friedman challenges what a photograph should/might look like. These two plus seven other artists do challenge nicely. See the show at Photographic Resource Center (PRC) is at 832 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA. Leslie has hit her stride with this and her reecent show at the Fruitlands Museum show. This lady is bright, inciteful and truly one to be watched, her work is of the highest order. Bruce Myren: Redux.Saturday, April 4th, 2009Bruce has his MFA Thesis show up at the Benton Museum on the UConn Campus in Storrs, CT and a fine show it is. 15 new 24×30 prints from 8×10 film of Fort Juniper made over the past six months. The one above is a particular favorite, a strong bit of seein. Additionally, The View Home, shown in a grid this time was shown and written about last year from his Gallery Kayafus show. Kudos. David Taylor: Aldrich MuseumMonday, March 9th, 2009David Taylor has a show at the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, CT. The exhibition is photographs and video installations entitled Frontier/Frontera looking at the border between Mexico and the US. A document through the eyes of a somewhat neutral but impassioned viewer of the land and the people on both sides. Regardless of your political position, the work shows us something about us. I was particularly taken with the video work with three multiple monitor installations. The museum is a marvelous jewel of a pocket museum with about ten galleries of first rate current work, including Taylor’s. David HilliardSaturday, February 28th, 2009Recent work (2008) of David Hilliard at Carroll & Sons Gallery at SOWA in boston is first rate. His work continues to evolve and is beautiful to boot. EgglestonSunday, January 4th, 2009I made the pilgrimage to the Whitney for the Eggleston retro and I left feeling rewarded. The guy can sure see and has always been able to see, but in a way that challenges what photographs are supposed to look like. In 1975 when I was finishing graduate school we did b&w or most of us did. Most everyone except Eggleston, Shore and Sternfeld. There were others of course but those three guys were the ones who gave the rest of us license. I always understood Shore and Sternfeld but my relationship with Eggleston was love/hate. He didn’t make pictures that looked like pictures we were supposed to make. He used color in a way that confounded what color had been used for. He could make dye transfer prints which of course no one could afford, but he made pictures that made you sit up and take notice. Inside of ovens, freezers for God’s sake, under beds and pictures of dogs drinking muddy water. Who made such pictures and why? The prints at the Whitney were surprisingly dark and heavy handed. I expected to see prints done in the fashion of the way the pictures had been portrayed in reproductions. They all worked, of course, but not the look I had expected. It was a pleasure to see the work at moderate sizes, most were about 20×24 and they read well. I left with my love/hate feelings intact although leaning more toward love than hate. There are still several (ok many) pictures that leave me wondering but then there is always a killer picture nearby. The book is a real disappointment as the reproductions are not first rate. The show is down Jan 27 so see it while you can. John Wood in RochesterThursday, November 6th, 2008In an epic undertaking, Nathan Lyons, supported by George Eastman House, Memorial Art Gallery and Visual Studies Workshop assembled, sequenced and installed 230 pictures in three venues, covering 40 years of Wood’s imagemaking. There is a companion book, published by Steidl, that is a must have addition to my library. When I walked in to the House (GEH) the front gallery held about 50 pictures and the feeling was eerie. First off, I remember so many of the pictures from the late 60s and early 70s, It felt like a history of my photographic education. Much of the extended thinking was something I emulated in my early life as a photographer. John Wood represents that ever inquisitive midset of “what if I try this, what will happen?” There was a certain disregard to the purist viewpoint of that era led by Minor White, Paul Caponigro, et al and he investigated the boundaries of what picture making was, what should it look like and how one should even make pictures. Although he was mainly photography based, even that was not strict dogma. I spent an hour today looking at the 130 some pictures at VSW and derived much energy from the work. The work wasn’t slathered in arty sauce, it was honest and organic and experimantal and full of energy and joy for the picture making process. How very cool. Panopticon GalleryFriday, October 17th, 2008Bruce Myren at Gallery KayafasFriday, October 17th, 2008
Optical confusion at YUAGFriday, October 10th, 2008Karin Rosenthal, Belly Landscape 1980 First Doubt: Optical Confusion in Modern Art, a new show by Joshua Chan, curator at Yale University Art Gallery, with 114 pictures drawn from the Allan Chasanoff collection, looks at optical confusion in pictures. A topic that is often talked about in classes but rarely investigated as thoroughly as this. With pictures from Ansel Adams to Lee Friedlander all dealing with a confused optical space, the viewer is challenged to look out and figure out sometimes very beguiling space. The show is up through January 4, 2009 but will be reconfigured three times during the run. Worth a look. |
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