Photographic Visions – Summer 2021
A curated international photography exhibition
July 29 – August 18, 2021 (Main Gallery)
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Photographic Visions is a biannual exhibition at PH21 Gallery, showing mini-series of the works of selected artists who submitted their portfolio for our solo exhibition competition. Our aim is to celebrate the work of photographers whose portfolio is progressive and visionary, forwarding photography in the 21st century.
Photographic Visions – Summer 2021 presents three images (in the form of mini-series) from ten photographers.
To find out more about the photographers, please click their names to visit their websites.
Please return in a few days to view and order an exhibition catalogue.
Exhibiting artists:
I express myself in terms of the widely appreciated portrait. I enjoy designing the real world of an unreal structure in the artistic field. The theme of my art comes from observing the life around. I read and see a lot and express by camera on picture. Te artistic work 'The Family' is based on my life. I investigated the theme of identity in my artistic series where I present the theory of being based on the artistic and sociological research of the role of being the artist, model, and recipient.
I document and interpret reality through my lens-based abstract art of digital manipulations. My approach is multi-layered. On the surface, I produce aesthetic images. I turn the commonplace into the sublime and the real into the surreal. Below the surface, I construct a narrative of the transformative power of photography, turning sight into perception and perception into reasoning. On a personal scale, the work is therapeutic for me. I can bring order to the chaos I see in the world and pay tribute to humanity's progression to enlightened sentience.
These photos are part of an ongoing project, shot in my studio in Bangkok Thailand of young men and women. I'm interested in this time in their life, and they sort out who they are and come to terms with themselves. In this liminal space, they seem to between a younger, less self-aware persona and an older more rigid concept that's put forward to the camera. The process allows them to just sit, relax and be themselves without posing or projecting giving us a moment, a slice of who they are or might be emerging into adulthood.
A central theme of my art is focused on things hidden away, whether physical or emotional. My photos bring a new and often uncomfortable perspective to social issues that are commonly ignored or concealed. I want to challenge viewers by forcing conflicting and reflective feelings sunk deep within themselves to the surface. To increase an awareness that we are much more complex than we would like to admit. In my current series I chose the gas mask without its big filter to portray the relentless bare minimum mindset society continues to display.
The images in this series are composites of my family photographs, photographs I took of my children, and New England landscapes. Generations reach for each other across time. Driven by a longing for connection, the images make real those things I hold dear. Though rooted in personal narratives, they address universal experience, interrogating the way in which family relationships and history play a role in shaping our sense of ourselves and understanding of our place in the world. They suggest that the present, in each of us, contains both the past and the future. Ultimately, this series portrays the layered process of becoming, and the complex interweaving of time, place, and identity.
Hugs to feel close after the forced distance of our strange times. Images dedicated to a father and his daughter. Smiling eyes, masks that fly away like white seagulls, their arms clasping and rediscovering the happiness of touching and feeling the scent of the skin.
I took these photographs last fall, over the winter and into 2021 when I felt comfortable enough to leave my home during the pandemic. I was aware, though, that even walking in my neighbourhood or driving nearby would still have to be a solitary pursuit. That isolation shows up in the images as a bit of overcast mystery, which is how I felt venturing out after so much time away from friends and family, but not knowing how long Covid precautions would be required.
In my art I wish to go beyond the boundaries of the real world and touch on the surreal and the juxtaposed. I am in search for the beauty and mystery ever present around us. I strive to create dreamlike realities with nature as my greatest inspiration. Being an artist means for me bringing your artistic vision into your everyday life. It means harnessing the moments of inspiration and creativity but likewise trying to embrace all aspects of the process also when it means adversity and hard work.
At a young age, Santarpia underwent a spinal fusion surgery. The procedure and recovery behooved him to seek new ways of using his body for labor, expression, and to subdue pain. The BOUND series present cyanotypes made using utilitarian hardware and medical products. The cyanotype uses UV light (the sun) to record the utilitarian objects in their purely potential form. The part becomes the whole. This image-making prioritizes the form and it’s other potentials. As near self-portraits too, these images capture the objects used to aid in medical interventions. Severe medical interventions themselves create tension on the body’s ability to perform labor. In a strained relation to labor/production, other human and bodily potentialities reveal themselves.
Literary photographer. Visual storyteller. Pure and poetic. Misty Mysterious. Attention to detail. There's a lot between light and shadow. Sometimes balancing between realism and surrealism, often spiced with a touch of humor. Homo ludens. Not staged but spontaneous photos. Always focused on the decisive moment. I shoot with my soul, not with the camera. I photograph as I live: I let things come to me and I don't consciously look for them. Please don't put me in a box.