Featuring: Jason Francisco, Kael Alford, Neil Jones, Bryan Meltz, Chandler Leathers, Matt Haffner, Wes Airgood & Sandy Hooper.

Spruill Gallery on blogspot.

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.”

© Tari Beroszi

“Tari Beroszi’s large-scale abstract photography panels will open Thursday, February 4 from 6-9pm at Snapdragon Photography/Jennifer Schwartz Gallery in TULA Arts Center. Beroszi’s work, “Seeing Sound”, is an exploration of music and image. She uses photography as a tool to translate the language of music into abstract images, resulting in a poetic and conceptual representation of a non-visual language. Her photographs are the abstract equivalents of what she feels and what she sees from within when listening to music.

An interview from WABE, talking about Weingarten’s new exhibition of portraiture at the High Museum, which opens to the public on Saturday.

There’s plenty of photography events happening in Atlanta this week! Here’s a few!

Composition Gallery’s “Four for Four” opens this Saturday.

“Composition Gallery was selected Best New Gallery in Atlanta in 2006, and has since developed a reputation for showcasing compelling and important photography from the region’s and the nation’s top emerging photographic artists. Composition has also hosted the work of nationally and internationally renowned photographers including Sylvia Plachy, Kael Alford, Al Rockoff, and Kristen Ashburn. The gallery will celebrate its Fourth Anniversary by presenting the work of four emerging photographers: Brittany Binler, Camilo Cruz, Rebecca Finley, and Tom Meiss. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, January 23rd from 7 to 10pm, and the exhibit will continue through Sunday March 7th.”

Arts Clayton has two shows opening on Wednesday, January 20th, “Odyssey 2010″ & “Digital Artifacts”.

Jackson Fine Art has an opening on Friday night, January 22nd, with work from Lynn Geesaman and Jack Spencer.

Lumiere has an opening on Friday, January 22nd with an exhibition from Robert Weingarten, “The Road Less Traveled,” which is in tandem with an exhibition of Mr. Weingarten’s work at the High Museum, “The Portrait Unbound“.

A peek at their collaborative exhibition at Youngblood via The Atlantan.

Stephanie Dowda & John Paul Floyd, on their current exhibition at Youngblood Gallery, .

Paul Hagedorn and The Canary Project (Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris) open a show entitled “Earth Work” at Hagedorn Foundation Gallery tmw, with an artist’s reception & talk on Thursday night, January 14th at 6pm.

Daniel Kariko has an upcoming show at Snapdragon, with a reception on Thursday, January 7th. Stephanie Dowda and John Paul Floyd have an opening at Youngblood Gallery on Saturday, January 2nd, at 7pm.

© Daniel Kariko

Photographer Oraien Catledge has a show of photographs of the people of Cabbagetown at Opal Gallery through January 9th. Creative Loafing has an article, a slideshow and an audio interview with Catledge here. Plus, there’s a forthcoming book of Catledge’s work in August, 2010, from University of Mississippi Press.

“The resulting body of work is a collection of approximately 50,000 negatives. The images present accidental landscapes disguised as portraits, as scene after scene of children and adults personifies the dilapidated surroundings. These stark black-and-white and rich sepia-toned photos are imbued with a quality that transcends time, capturing an era that feels much further away than the late ’70s and early ’80s. Much like Dorothea Lange’s Dust Bowl photos or Walker Evans’ Great Depression imagery, Catledge’s photographs embody the suffering and celebrations of a poor, undereducated white haven on the brink of disappearance.”

ACP 11 participating venue Opal Gallery has an opening this Thursday night (7-9pm) with work from Oraien Catledge. There’ll be an artist talk on Saturday at noon, as well.

“Opal Gallery is pleased to present ORAIEN CATLEDGE: Cabbagetown portraits by Atlanta-based photographer Oraien Catledge. For over twenty-five years, Oraien Catledge used his camera to document and celebrate the people of Cabbagetown–Atlanta’s own historic mill village. This exhibition represents an intimate survey of Catledge’s friends and acquaintances and reveals a deep affection for this unique community. Catledge’s direct approach to photography recalls the work of Walker Evans by finding a balance between documentary and artistic impulse. Each image is a trove of hundreds of discrete photographic facts of a familiar landscape and the people who created it, and by all accounts reaffirms his position as an important contributer to the history of American photography.

Oraien Catledge was born in Tutwiler, Mississippi in 1928. He was self-taught as a photographer and came to his vocation near the end of his career with the American Foundation for the Blind. His photographs can be found nationally and internationally in private and public collections including The Museum of Contemporary Art, Ga., and Hartsfield International Airport. He lives in Decatur with his wife Sue.”

Danielle Avram will be leading a walk-through and discussion of “Look Again” at the High Museum on Thursday night, at 7pm. Details over on the High’s website.

Burnaway.org reviews Dorothy O’Connor’s “Tableau Vivant”.