Upcoming Exhibits
Black & White: The Absence of Color
Opening Reception: March 9th, 2012 Mpls Photo Center Second Floor Gallery
On Exhibit: March 9th through April 22nd, 2012
Photo: Cordelia Bailey
The world’s first photographic images were made in shade of gray, black, and white, and the black and white photograph continues to be an important palette for photographers today. The beauty of a well-printed black and white photograph is undeniable—it is striking, unearthly, and can be life changing.Some of the world’s most memorable photographs are black and white—the rich blacks, glowing whites, and silvery grays of a strong, black and white photograph leave a lasting impression on the mind. For photographers, those deep blacks hold a special significance, as it is the black tones that reveal themselves first in photographic chemistry and communicate the magic, mystery, and possibility of the photographic process.
Black and white photographs can have painterly, etching-like qualities, which were celebrated by photography’s inventors and early adopters. Photography as art was first championed with The Photo-Secessionists who celebrated the pictorial aspect of the black and white image. Today photography is widely accepted as an art form and as a key medium within contemporary and conceptual art.
The choice of using black and white versus color is the photographer’s choice, and the reasons for that choice can be personal, theoretical, or aesthetic. This call for entry—Black and White—The Absence of Color—looks to grays and blacks and whites to tell the story and make the picture that color would often muddy.
Exhibit Curator: Bevin Bering Dubrowski is Executive Director of Houston Center for Photography, a nonprofit organization founded in 1981 offering year-round exhibitions, workshops, publications, outreach programs, lectures, and classes. HCP's mission is to increase society's understanding and appreciation of photography and its evolving role in contemporary culture, and produces 15 - 20 exhibitions annually on and off-site, balancing work by regional and internationally acclaimed emerging, mid-career, and established artists. Bevin curates exhibition for HCP and is also editor of spot magazine, a bi-annual journal of photography that includes artist portfolios, interviews, exhibition and book excerpts, and highlights on HCP members' work.
Michael Crouser: Mid-Career Retrospective
Opening Reception: May 18th, 2012 Mpls Photo Center Second Floor GalleryOn Exhibit: April 27th through June 17th, 2012
Photo: Micheal Crouser
Michael Crouser first picked up a camera at age 14, which means he has had plenty of time to develop a signature style. And in the photos currently on exhibit at New York City's Leica Gallery — at a solo, midcareer show — that signature style is clear. From his earliest photos to the most recent, it's almost completely consistent.
Splitting time between Minneapolis, where he was born, and Brooklyn, Crouser teaches classes about "Finding your Voice as a Photgrapher" at the Mpls Photo Center. It boils down to part trial and error, part instinct, he explains.
He offers an analogy: "I don't think that musicians always have a choice in the kind of music that they make. The style sort of presents itself once you've been experimenting."
If you're a musician, you start by learning the technical, the techniques. You memorize chords until your hands move involuntarily. And then, if you're lucky, something unique emerges on its own when you least expect it.
The same applies for Crouser but with a camera and a darkroom. It took him years and years to develop his photographic voice, and throughout his career he has stuck to film, mastering the artistic techniques of toning, dodging and burning inside the darkroom.
Crouser's commitment to a style and to his subjects is exemplified in the series Los Toros — a 15-year study of bullfighting in Europe, Mexico and South America — and in his most recent project, an ongoing body of work about ranchers out West, which is already six years in the making.
"Nobody else could have made these pictures," Crouser says in a modestly musing tone — meaning the photos are uniquely him, and he is the photos. And, like his work, that's beautiful.
