The brand new Serenbe Photography Center is opening its doors this Saturday, March 13th, 5-8pm! Their calendar (pdf link) is already full of great programming, and it’s with great excitement that we welcome a new, robust photography organization to Greater Atlanta!

Swan Coach House Gallery is having a show called “Abstracted Nature” opening this Thursday, March 11th, at 6pm. A combination of painters and photographers will be exhibited, curated by Marianne Lambert. Photographers include Marc Fagan, Kathryn Kolb, Billy Newman, and Marilyn Suriani.

Please check out the Swan Coach House press release for more information.

© Kathryn Kolb, “American Chesnut”

“THREE VOICES

Photographs by John Bohannon, Pam Moxley, and Ansley West
March 13 – May 1, 2010

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 13, 7-10pm

Snapdragon Photography/Jennifer Schwartz Gallery, Atlanta, GA

Snapdragon Photography/Jennifer Schwartz Gallery is pleased to announce our latest exhibition, “Three Voices”, featuring photography by Atlanta artists John Bohannon, Pam Moxley, and Ansley West. The conceptual photographs in this exhibit depict intimate scenes and objects which capture each photographer’s unique voice. A party for the artists will be held on Saturday March 13th, from 7 to 10pm, and the exhibition will continue through Saturday May 1st.

John Bohannon creates images which capture his encounters with places and things that he feels have emotive potential. The resulting photographs are a collection of moments and memories – a personal experience, both for the photographer and viewer. Bohannon has been included in dozens of juried exhibitions throughout the Southeast, and his work has been featured in Shots magazine and the Florida Review. In 2009, he was one of twelve photographers chosen to participate in Gifted, Atlanta Celebrates Photography’s Public Art Project.

Self-taught artist Pam Moxley is the co-owner of Original Art Finders and Curator of Grace Gallery in Marietta, Georgia. She has been featured in numerous solo and juried exhibitions and her work is included in collections throughout the United States, including the Southeast Museum of Photography, the City of Atlanta Collection, and the Atlanta Photography Group’s Collector’s Portfolio. Moxley’s mixed-media images are simple in composition, yet complex in theme. Her work often incorporates child-like elements, giving them a nostalgic and maternal feel. When she is finished with each photographic construction, she utilizes several other media, adding layers of both texture and meaning.

Ansley West’s photographic compositions interpret narratives both real and imagined. She often places herself into the photographs, in order to recontextualize these stories. Her work sometimes portrays social issues about which she is passionate. The images selected for this show come from two bodies of work: “Fences” addresses the physical and psychological hurdles we face and how we move past them, while “Landscapes” seeks to show that human connection to the earth can be a symbiotic rather than a parasitic relationship. As well as being included in many group exhibitions across the US and featured in three solo shows, West’s work is included in many private and museum collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia. She has recently returned from Uganda, where she shot a documentary film called Mother of a Nation, about women living with HIV and their connection to agriculture.

“We are very excited to announce an upcoming exhibition of photographs by David Johnson (March 11th- May 1st, 2010). At age 20, in 1946, David was the first African American student to study at the California School of Fine Arts ( currently San Francisco Art Institute). While studying directly under Ansel Adams, Johnson began to photograph his neighborhood, San Francisco’s Fillmore District. In his first Atlanta exhibition, David will showcase his portraits and documentation of the Fillmore as a vibrant center of jazz music from 1946-1963. Please mark your calendar for a reception with the artist on March 25th from 6-9p. And, stay tuned for announcement of the date for a talk with David Johnson and curator of the exhibition Edward Spriggs.

For more information about David Johnson’s photography, check out the following articles:
http://www.npr.org/
http://www.apogeephoto.com/

We’re really looking forward to tmw night’s edition of Greenhouse, featuring Matt Haffner, Katherine Taylor, and Jason Francisco, at 7pm at Emory. Here’s a map to the Visual Arts building, and more info about Greenhouse. RSVP on Facebook!

Chuck Hemard’s “Shelter” is on view at Opal Gallery, with a meet-the-artist event on Thursday night at 6:30pm.

“The notion of “shelter” implies sanctuary and protection from danger. Often, sources of this essential human need range from stable ones to more temporary or those derived from more transient means. Contemporary American culture is both fickle and insistent. At times, our insatiable hunger for progress can lead to a greed-driven pursuit of sometimes-empty dreams. Often progress involves struggle. These five images evoke curiosity in the everyday - people, their objects, and actions within the landscape - in order to encourage thoughtful consideration and awareness of our way of life and the potential for significance within the fleeting.

Utilizing the camera’s ability to transform life’s over-common and over-looked irrelevancies, I make (post documentary) work that is at best keen observation begging for consideration as opposed to a call to action. I enjoy photography’s sincere though ambiguous nature that allows for a range of potential meanings to be available, and, how editing informs likely interpretations.”

More info APGPHOTO.ORG

“Trees Atlanta invites Georgia photographers to enter the “My Favorite Tree” Photography Contest. The contest will culminate in a show that will exhibit at the Trees Atlanta Kendeda Center from October 8th, 2010 through November 6th, 2010. This show is sponsored by the Georgia Forestry Commission (view disclaimer) in conjunction with Atlanta Celebrates Photography. All entries will be accepted and displayed in the show.”

LoveNests will showcase the lives of a colorful collective of Atlanta locals through design. The exhibition is a collaborative effort between Portfolio Center photography and Georgia Tech industrial design students. Through interviews, storytelling, and photography, the curators will delve into the personalities and histories of popular Atlantans and discover what objects define, inspire, and capture the essence of their individuality. Once this process is complete, the photographers and designers will work together to translate and engineer each person’s symbolic spirit, so to speak, into a three-dimensional representation. Structural, abstract, graphic and diverse, each Atlantan is tangibly personified at MODA through designed environments. LoveNests serves as an engaging, illustrative biography of our Atlanta favorites.

The fascinating Atlantans featured in the exhibit, in no particular order, are:

Danger Woman
Kevin Gillespie
Andrew Young
Aidan Hornaday
Daniel Holzberger
Farmer D
Ballethnic
Prophet Love
Rafael Ibarra
Baton Bob

The reception will be held Friday, Feb. 26th from 6:30-9:30pm.”

“I want with this work to start the process of finding my identity and discovering the best ways to express it through my photographs. I want with my images to create more attention and curiosity to our culture and how we relate to each other, not only between US and Puerto Rico but between all the different races and Americans with different backgrounds that live here. I want to contribute to make “the other’s art”, just art.”

Here’s a pdf with info about the new exhibition at Trees Atlanta from David Knox and Kathryn Kolb.

We’re excited about the launch of the new Serenbe Photography Center, just south of Atlanta. They have an extensive program of workshops on the calendar, and their traditional (and digital) darkroom offers many options for local photographers. Fantastic!

Atlanta photographer Sheila Pree Bright has an impressive list of exhibitions this Winter & Spring:

Dolls, Girls and Grillz in Kentucky
Jan 9 - April 10, 2010
Dolls, Girls and Grillz in “Searching for the Heart of Black Identity” at the” Kentucky Museum of Art and Crafts , Louisville, KY.

Posing Beauty: Plastic Bodies
Jan 16- May 9, 2010
“Posing Beauty: Plastic Bodies” at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario, CA

Double Exposure
Jan 23 - May 30, 2010
Suburbia in “Double Exposure” at the Southeast Museum of Photography, Dayonta Beach, FL

Faraway Nearby
Feb 19 - May 9, 2010
Suburbia in Faraway Nearby Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, KS

Young Americans premiering at The Armory Show NYC
March 4 -6, 2010
Young Americans in The Armoury Show at Jenkins Johnson Gallery New York, NY. Young Americans Artist talk and book signing event on March 5th, 4pm at the Jenkins Johnson booth, Pier 94.

Suburbia at Fotofest Biennial 2010
March 12 - 25, 2010
Suburbia in “Road to Nowhere” at Fotofest 2010 Biennial focusing on US Contemporary Photography, Houston, TX.

OnSite
April 1 - May 30, 2010
Suburbia in “OnSite” at the California Museum of Photography, Riverside, CA.