Lost/Found: Explorations in Photographic Time and Space
October 30, 2019 to November 23, 2019
Steven Marks
Found and Lost are drawn from an ongoing body of work, Shadows and Acts. Shadows and Acts explores the mystery of contemporary human existence and its most powerful psychological emotions. The imagery is vivid and raw, designed to lift the veil from experience by reinventing appearance and boldly picturing the flux of reality. Through their use of rich, almost violent, colors, and the tension between hard and soft edges, these accidental encounters, mysterious and strange, take us to the tip of the precipice, intimating mortality and the transitory shadows of our unseen lives. Lives, it must be noted, that have become more emotionally isolated, devoid of meaning, and existentially fractured through the pseudo-connectivity of digital technology and social media. In this context, we are already lost (and adrift), hoping against hope to be ultimately found (and anchored).
Matt Francisco
Each time we look through a window, we see a framed perspective of our environment. Everything we see—either reflected or absorbed by the visible light spectrum—yields a unique pattern of color and shape that can change the way we interpret our surroundings. Throughout each day, those patterns change ever so slightly—when daylight shifts and weather changes, the color and form of any given object can change drastically. By obscuring the light shining through, one can distill the most intricate landscape down to a simple palette of color.
This diptych of images serves as a continuation of a previous work in which I explored this concept. This time, I photographed the childhood home of a close friend; a house in the midst of great transition as her father prepared to sell the home. The result is an exploration in a feeling of loss with regards to familiar environment—not to the structure itself, but to the warmth and feeling it provides.
Kim Llerena and Nancy Daly
American Miniature, is a recent collaboration between Nancy Daly and Kim Llerena. Collected on numerous cross-country road trips, through a cumulative total of 47 states, souvenirs from various sites are presented against brightly colored backdrops in large format photographs. On the gallery floor, small snapshots of tourists acquired on those trips are mounted at the tops of large pedestal-like objects, transforming anonymous travelers’ passing moments into a collection of tangible souvenirs.
Each souvenir is photographed against a solid-colored background that vaguely recalls its original context – for example, a commemorative plate from the Field of Dreams movie site sits against a field of corn-yellow. The location from which the object is derived becomes secondary, an abstract backdrop that enhances or rounds out the memory. Employing the visual language of product photography, the images re-contextualize these mass-produced knick-knacks, removing them from their place on the shelf and inverting their status as something cheap and memorial into something grand and aspirational – oversized, self-reliant monuments to travel and tourism.
The tourists in the snapshots punctuate and often obscure the views of the landscapes they are photographing or the monuments they are posing on top of, highlighting how awkwardly we tend to interact with an environment when it’s one we’re unfamiliar with. They appear oblivious to their surroundings, while the gallery viewer navigating around the objects is made acutely aware of theirs.
In both the souvenir portraits and the tourist snapshots, the original locations are secondary, serving as either abstract or obstructed backgrounds against which the important acts of commerce and image-taking occur.
Soomin Ham
The “Unseen" series is created from old 35mm color negatives from my childhood photographs. They have never been printed since the films were either cropped, light leaked or over/under-exposed as most of them are the first frame of the negative strips. Collected strips are scanned and printed digitally and are torn by hand to make a collage in the shape of a film; based on related timeframes and visual appeal, the torn-up prints are arranged together to form a composition, reflecting the forgotten place and time.
It is a discovery of untold stories that evoke my vanishing childhood memory, one of the most beautiful moments with my family.
Alexandra Silverthorne
In Morocco in 2015, I returned to night photography. The windy paths of the medina are disorienting enough in the daytime, but once night falls, it’s nearly impossible to find your way. Months later in rural Costa Rica, I was again inspired to shoot in the darkness; this time drawn to how vast the rural landscape felt. Since then I’ve continued to shoot at night whenever possible and have photographed 29 different locations in twelve countries on three continents.
In March 2019, I photographed in Ireland and Northern Ireland. As Brexit talks loomed, I thought about borders. My train crossed from Ireland into UK without me realizing it; a privilege that may be revoked if/when a hard border is placed between the two countries. Interested in the socio- political construction of borders, I have chosen to title the images purely by the longitude/ latitude coordinates (and exposure number). I edit them to black and white to remove colors that may provoke an emotional reading of the image.
In his book Blindspot, photographer/critic Teju Cole writes that “Darkness is not empty. It is information at rest.” When the information about landscape, culture, and daily activities is at rest under the abstraction of night, these nocturnal images begin to come together. Borders become irrelevant and instead we are presented with a poetic examination of light and shadow. Under the uniformity of the monochrome darkness, it is my hope that the images provide a space for questioning our understanding of the world around us.
Shaun Schroth
“Still…Life” is a piece created from collected, seemingly random, bits of nature to showcase the persistence and interconnectedness of nature’s lifecycle, while recognizing the inevitability of death and its integral role in life.
Christopher Prosser
Tiny iridescent dancers, set forth into the wind, meandering aimlessly on gossamer wings.
THE RETURN OF WHAT PASSES AWAY
Iwan Bagus
I went home last year just three days before my mother died. I spoke to her a lot in those three days; she had no words for me. She died peacefully. I am left to wonder what she would have said to me if she could.
This past summer I went home again and found my mother’s last CAT scan. I also inherited several antique Javanese batik sarongs that actually came from my great grandparents; all in perfect condition. There is one particular sarong that my mother always asked me to wear in Javanese ceremonial occasions, “sido mulyo,” which means “continuously noble.”
I stack these sarongs in my room with no direct light. I stare at them often. What do these precious fabrics dream? I know if they don’t dream, they are dead.
Living abroad for over half my life has made me who I am. Things I thought I lost, like my own cultural identity, return slowly in fragments. I embrace them closely, and at the same time, I must detach myself from those fragments, to stay connected to my current existence.
The dark void, the intricacies of the batik pattern, the CAT scan images floating around me, and the melodious repeated words I can’t decipher, have invited me to be lost in a dream. And when I find myself in a dream, I know I’m alive.
Leena Jayaswal
Absence in a place becomes palpable when one searches for something or someone lost. The loss can be a physical transforming of that space or can be a memory that floats through it in death. The numbness remains whether that transformation occurs by choice or when it is out of one’s control.
Rania A. Razek
I got lost, and I found myself. For every photography adventure I got lost in, I found parts of me I never knew I had. I learned more about my capabilities. I sought more. I felt more.
Title Image: “Harmony,” 2012. While standing in the midst of the seemingly infinite white sands in New Mexico, I gain my senses. With eyes wide-shut, I felt the crisp air blowing through my hair, heard the silence and felt the grainy texture of the sand between my fingers and toes. With no phone signal, I needed a compass to find my way, just as it is in my life’s uncertainties.
Title Image: “No One In Site,” 2019. Again, I found an overlooked road in Vermont, lacking GPS signal, I used a paper map to find my way. I stopped to take images of the road, where no car has gone through for almost an hour. I found myself free from technological devices and more in touch with the nature.
It is through my many journeys that I learn more about myself. I am comfortable with myself, with who I am and where I came from. Each place that I have lived in has become a part of who am today. I do not need labeling from anyone, from any place. I am what I am, and what I intend to be on earth, a human being.
Get lost, and discover yourself.
Scorched Earth
Gary Anthes
Chinle, Arizona sits at the geographic and spiritual center of the 27,000-square-mile Navajo Nation reservation. In 1864 Kit Carson and his Union troops swept through the canyons near here, killing Navajos by the score and utterly destroying their homes, orchards, and animals. That campaign triggered the surrender and deportation of some 8,000 starving and demoralized people in what became known as the Long Walk of the Navajo.
The Navajos were allowed to return to their homes four years later, and since then many have gone on to serve proudly in the U.S. military. During World War II, 400 Navajos became “code talkers,” relaying radio messages in their Native language that the Japanese could not decode.
Today, 38% of the people on the Navajo reservation live in poverty – three times the national average – while nearly one in five suffer in extreme poverty.
Jeremy Limerick
Photography allows me to capture the stories that occur every day. I want the photos that I take to illustrate the story of life. Some of the stories may be ironic, others may be hard to decipher, and some may require no explanation as they just reflect life.
With each story I strive to capture the emotion, as I want the viewer to be taken to that place and feel like they are watching the story unfold in front of them. I do this by using a few styles, my main style is black and white because it conveys strong emotion and I don’t feel like the lack of color in a black and white photograph can restrict the wide spectrum that the photograph can capture. And in these two images their stories are better told in Black and White. In the “Man in The Wall” the subject found me despite my attempts to remain invisible, he was still able to find my lens. In “Homeless in Venice” The sense of loss is obvious, and the question one is left with is; What is her loss?
I am not an absolutist, I do not believe in one way to take photos, I allow myself to be guided by the story and how it wants to be told. My collection of work is my collection of stories.
Kadeem Morris
Kadeem Morris: the man that lives in the in-between. Born in '95, Morris is on the cusp of being a millennial but still relates to Gen Z; growing up, he spent half his life in Jamaica and the other in America. Morris navigates the changes that continuously come his way while juggling the multiple cultures that make up his environment.
As a photographer, he captures life as it exits. Morris understands the simplicity of life as well as the rush of the modern day rat race. He seeks to capture all aspects that encompass the totality of the human experience.
Morris' photos serve as a window into people's lives, allowing one to become the observer of the big picture as well as the small mundane things in the human experience. Morris has the ability to combine the personal and the distant leaving his audience hovering in-between.
For this Exhibit he chose to focus on religion as a subject of inquiry. Growing up in the Caribbean, religion is immensely important. As we grow, travel and experience more of the world and the realities of life many of the things we learned as youth get tested, religion included. For many religion comes and goes through their lives. The image serves as a look at losing and finding religion, and could either be interpreted as either losing or finding religion. It is up to the viewer to determine which one it is based on their experiences or biases.
Fred Zafran
Fred Zafran is a documentary photographer exploring the urban environment as metaphor and map of our inner human landscape. Photographing at the boundaries of illumination and darkness, Zafran’s work is a gentle observation of the city, its streets, and a few of us as we wander through the day and unanticipated moments of quiet and solitude.
“The artistic motivation behind my work is quite simply the astonishment at the very fact of one’s own existence in the world. No one gives you a manual when you come in, so we are left to discover our own means of understanding and finding our way. Everything deserves our careful attention and awareness… even the smallest details may contain great secrets. I am most interested in photographing the exquisite ordinariness of things. All photography is symbolic, and metaphor is more revealing than a literal depiction.”
Fred Zafran came to photography more than 45 years ago. Today all of his images are captured digitally with careful consideration given to light, shadow, darkness and color as key structural and emotional elements. Zafran has found a strong resonance with the complex multi-layered images of Alex Webb and Harry Gruyaert, the magical realism of Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and the work of Yamamoto Masao as photographer of “…silent and empty spaces.”
Fred Zafran lives in Loudoun County, VA. He retired after a successful career as a consultant and senior executive in the technology services industry. Zafran is a juried artist of the Torpedo Factory Art Center, a member of Multiple Exposures Gallery in Alexandria, VA, and exhibits his work throughout the DC metro area.