Over the last six weeks, students have been shooting with Vivitar digital cameras (thank you, Showcase!) and learning how to express themselves and communicate with photos. The photos below show the students collaborating on their photo essay during their last class. Feel free to view as a slideshow. Thanks again to Showcase, Young Audiences, and T. Lynne Pixley!

A quick reminder about Julie Blackmon’s opening at Jennifer Schwartz Gallery on Friday night at 7pm, followed by her Artist’s Talk at 11am on Saturday at SCAD-Atlanta. Below, the press release from Jennifer Schwartz Gallery, who’ll be hosting the group show that includes Julie’s work, as well as work from Michael Marshall, Aline Smithson and Maggie Taylor.

For Immediate Release
Contact Ryan Nabulsi
ryan@jenniferschwartzgallery.com
(404) 885-1080
Still.Life.
Photographs by Julie Blackmon, Michael Marshall, Aline Smithson and Maggie Taylor

Jennifer Schwartz Gallery is proud to present Still.Life., an exhibition exploring the connection between photography and painting in the digital age. Julie Blackmon, Michael Marshall, Aline Smithson and Maggie Taylor utilize technology to push the limitations of photography. The Jennifer Schwartz Gallery will host an opening reception on Friday, April 8 from 7 until 10 PM. The show will be on view at the gallery until May 28, 2011. The gallery is free and open to the public. Additionally, Julie Blackmon will give an artist talk at Savannah College of Art and Design on April 9 at 11 AM. This talk is sponsored by Jennifer Schwartz Gallery, SCAD and Atlanta Celebrates Photography.

Ever since the creation of photograph in the early half of the 19th century, the medium has lived in the shadow of its parent-figure, painting. In the beginning painting heavily influenced photography by dictating the aesthetics which the medium should strive toward; however, with the rise of photographic digitization in the past decade or so, photography has exploded as an experimental medium, incorporating almost all painterly techniques. While no one trend in painting or photography can define the overall current of the medium, certain trends can clue us in on how these two mediums have been influencing each other. One way we can see these trends is in the works of the four photographers in Still.Life. who focus their images toward painterly themes.

Influenced by 17th century Dutch painter Jan Steen, known for his depiction of boisterous family events, Julie Blackmon is interested in blurring the line between art and life. Her work is reminiscent of the Dutch Baroque with its precision, attention to detail and sense of humor. The oldest of nine children, and now with three children of her own, Blackmon knows firsthand the chaos of family events. Blackmon has exhibited widely in the United States and her photographs reside in permanent collections such as George Eastman House International Museum of Photography in Rochester, NY and Museum of Fine Art in Houston, TX. In 2008, Domestic Vacations, a monograph of her work, was published by Radius Press.

Michael Marshall’s multi-layered photographs explore the intersections of science and the left-brained sensibility of intuition and emotion. In these contemporary approaches to impressionistic paintings, Marshall uses fine Japanese tissue paper to create an opaque layered image where the viewer sees through one layer and into another. On view at the gallery will be new works from his “Pipeline” series that are “inspired by the dichotomy of the Gulf of Mexico, beautiful and tranquil (a vacation spot), yet the heart of controversy and disaster, from hurricanes to the recent oil spill.” Marshall is currently the Chair of Photography at the University of Georgia.

After a career as a New York Fashion Editor and working along side of the greats of fashion photography, Aline Smithson discovered the family Rolleiflex and never looked back. Her work has been featured widely in publications and exhibited throughout the country. Smithson writes and edits Lenscratch blog, which explores contemporary photography and offers opportunities for exposure and community. In the show, her is a direct play from James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s Arrangement in Black and Grey: The Artist’s Mother. In these hand painted silver gelatin prints, Smithson creates varied compositions that explore the fantasy of imagining different identities for those we love.

After ten years as a still-life photographer, Maggie Taylor turned to her computer to create new images in 1996. The resulting photographs start a dialogue with Surrealist painters, such as Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali. These compositions of found images, photographed scenes, and digitally manipulated imagery create fantastical dream-world landscapes. She has participated in numerous solo and group shows throughout the country and abroad, and her work is in numerous private and public collections including Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA and Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, TX.

Jennifer Schwartz Gallery is newly located at 1000 Marietta Street, Suite 112, Atlanta, GA 30318. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11 AM to 5 PM and by appointment. For more information call the gallery at (404) 885-1080 or visit www.jenniferschwartzgallery.com.

You can take the shuttle from MARTA this year! More info about ACP’s Opening Reception at Le Flash at leflash-atlanta.com

Dorothea Lange – ACP 11

It’s a big week for ACP, as openings, events, lectures and workshops are kicking this year’s festival into high gear! We’re pleased to be collaborating with Lumière in their presentation of Dorothea Lange and Her Impact: a Film Screening and Panel Discussion at the High Museum on Thursday, at 7pm. The lecture is followed by Lumière’s exhibition of Lange’s work, opening this Friday.

It’s great to see all the new participating venues involved this year, as well as old favorites. This week brings a great, diverse selection, from Perry Julien’s opening in Midtown at Apres Diem, to the Westside where Saltworks & Get This! Gallery have openings on Friday, and this weekend brings the first events of SlowExposures, including the world’s first group show of photographs taken by dogs!

Updated:
Tue: Perry Julien’s The Music Seen at Apres Diem.
Tue: Teri Darnell’s nature photos at REI
Thu: Film and Panel Discussion at the High Museum:
Great Women in Photography – Dorothea Lange
Fri: Jane Kerr’s New Slant on the South opens at Callenwolde
Fri: Fay Gold Selects at Atlanta Photography Gallery
Fri: Bill Daniels’ Ground Score at Get This! Gallery
Fri: phoDOGraphy at SlowExposures
Fri: Jefferson Pinder’s Lazarus at Saltworks
Sat: What’s Happening Now at Cherrylion
Sat: Workshop with Tim Barnwell at SlowExposures
Sun: SlowExposures Salon: Surviving Tough Times
Sun: Ephemeral Musings by Wendy Phillips at Hammonds House

Tickets are available online for next week’s ACP Photography Auction Gala Fundraiser, and check out the Google Calendars for keeping track of this year’s Festival. Printed Festival Guides will be available at the Lange event on Thursday at the High Museum, and it’s already available online and as a pdf.

Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you out and about!

- ACP

Below are a few pics of the night from ACP, and links to others found online. It was quite a night!

David Allen Jones has a set of images here.

via Matthieu
Masquelet on flickr, whose slideshow is below.

Here’s an mp3 of the audio, if you’d like to listen.

“Massive ambition has been Roney’s calling card – at least since the inception of her Global Portals project in 2005. Her resource-intensive work often requires production in the extreme, and few facilities in the city can accommodate the physical breadth required to make the work resonate. As the culmination of its Working Artists Project, however, MOCA GA has shown that its investment in Roney was a smart bet.”

[Danielle Roney explores virtual realities in Genesis Trial: Johannesburg at MOCA GA]

Gregory Heisler is an internationally recognized commercial photographer, whose work includes 70 TIME Magazine covers of people influencing the period in which we live. His work has also been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Life, Sports Illustrated, Gentleman’s Quarterly and Esquire.

In addition to his critically acclaimed photographic images, Heisler regularly participates as a speaker and educator at the International Center of Photography, The School of Visual Arts, and Parsons School of Design.
He worked with Arnold Newman early in his career.

See this event, a collaboration between ACP and Lumière, in the ACP Festival Guide.

Press the pink play button to listen to the interview, in three parts.

© “Loom Weaving”, Robert Glenn Ketchum

On the 60s, Eliot Porter, Glen Canyon, advocacy, spiritual doors, the Hudson River.

On Alaska’s importance, old-growth, legislation, living the adventure, embroideries, digital manipulation, collaboration, textures with textile, avant-garde schooling, photo-realistic textile, Hockney’s rugs, Nixon, textile guilds and negative space.

© “Choose Joy”, Robert Glenn Ketchum, 2006

On how to turn reflected light on water (in a photograph) into a weaving.

The lecture is part of a three-part series with leading authorities on Alaska and the environment. As President, Jimmy Carter helped establish National Parks in Alaska, and Ketchum will be speaking about these places, as well as his work as a photographer of wild spaces.

39 large-format photographs of Ketchum’s are currently hanging at the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum. Please read more about that exhibit on the Carter Library site. That show will be up until April 13th.

Ketchum’s lecture next Thursday compliments his show opening Jan. 25th at Lumiere Gallery, called “Nature’s Palette”. In addition to photographs, Ketchum will be showing silk Chinese embroidery from the Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute in Suzhou, China.

For more information about the lecture and events surrounding Robert Glenn Ketchum’s visit to Atlanta, please see Lumiere Gallery’s site, and we hope to see you on Thursday the 24th at the Carter Museum.

Here’s an uncommon sight at the lecture, a student looking at actual film.