Photographic Visions – Winter 2024
A curated international photography exhibition
January 11 – February 3 (1st session) and February 10 – March 5 (2nd session)
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Click on the thumbnail to view the image. Click on the image for a larger view and information.
"Photographic Visions" is a biannual exhibition at PH21 Gallery showcasing mini-series of works from selected artists who submitted their portfolios for our solo exhibition competition. Our goal is to celebrate the work of photographers with progressive and visionary portfolios, pushing the boundaries of photography in the 21st century.
"Photographic Visions – Winter 2024" features three images presented in mini-series from photographers, divided into two sections.
To learn more about the photographers, click on their names to visit their respective websites.
Exhibiting artists:
January 11 – February 3 (1st session)
My work merges pictorial considerations and narrative elements to tell a story beyond a traditional representation. By blurring the lines between reality and imagination I am transforming the mundane into something extraordinary and thought-provoking.
’Conversations with Myself’ explores shifting notions of the self. The sense of time is not linear; the past intervenes and destabilizes the present. [...] The photographs are “still,” but the psyche is in motion. In this work, the complexity of being a modern woman is explored. There is a sadness for what might have been otherwise, but a glory in experiencing what is possible through a radical engagement with oneself and the creative impulse.
These images explore the statuary found at the gravesites of three children. […] By photographing figurative art in an intentional manner, I want to provide the viewer with the opportunity to explore their own thoughts and feelings about each statue, the rituals of death, death itself, and how they want to be remembered.
Rytis Gervickas
These photographs were taken with a medium format film camera. It's my take on landscape photography. I was searching for something interesting and a reason to take landscape pictures. These are the results of my search.
"Rising" and "Blooming" reflect on the grip between physical and emotional worlds. The inhabitants of scenes are united in universal human experiences composing person's broad inner landscape and exploring framework of formation of individual's identity. The figure walking through bleak winter realm focuses on self reliance, the path often serving as a metaphor of life itself. While being in contractual relations with their soul light bulb the figure is on the journey to reestablish connectedness to environment. [...]
In this series Summer Fearies, I explore the relationship between ecology and the natural environment of "HImebotaru" flying in the summer night forest.
Alteration and damage caused by deforestation, natural disasters, climate change, and exploitation of wild places by tourism and industry. The enchanting light and awe-inspiring qualities of forests at night suggest the need to protect them. […]
[...] The Mug Shot Project showcases 3D sculpted facial mugs in absurdist tableaus that gently and humorously chide USA culture and customs. The mugs usually require creating a costumed absurdist body pedestal that provides visual diversity gives the mugs some height. Even costumed, they have no arms or legs, so action to describe an event is severely limited to narrative titles that are essential to reveal meaning and context to the viewer.
It is the recognition of our common humanity that drives me as a photographer. These images from around the world are chance encounters that paint an intimate portrait of the human family. I view everyday objects and rituals as a sacred part of our being. As a social documentary photographer, I use my camera to capture “Who Are We?"
Platinum prints are considered to be the most permanent of all photographic processes, but they have a little-known side effect. Their key ingredient, the noble metal platinum, reacts with other paper if left in prolonged contact. After decades, a faint mirror image appears on the nearby surface. In this project, found “ghost” images are rephotographed and made permanent again as modern platinum prints. The intention of this circular process is to harness the mysterious visual qualities of the source images and point to a surprising wrinkle in the fabric of photographic representation. According to current research, the original platinum prints are not depleted in this process, meaning they can theoretically reproduce themselves infinitely if given enough time.
The “window” as motif and metaphor has held a central place throughout the history of art. Less central, though no less significant, is the window “treatment”. Often known as curtains, drapes, shades, veils, shutters, and blinds, they too serve as motif and metaphor. [...] ‘Curtain Calls and Veiled Encounters’ seeks to explore how we regard the light we let into our lives and the role it plays in defining who we are.
February 10 – March 5 (2nd session)
In the late 1950s, Bernd and Hilla Becher initiated a photographic inventory of the architectural heritage from the industrial era, then marked by obsolescence and destined for disappearance. Their photographs, perfectly neutral due to their adherence to a systematic protocol, unveil the formal variations among the buildings photographed (blast furnaces, gas holders, water towers, etc.), which they refer to as Anonymous Sculptures.
In resonance with their work, the Erased series actualizes a process of erasure operating here at an earlier stage. Focusing on blue water towers against clear skies, captured frontally in direct sunlight, these images reveal only evanescent outlines. In this way, they symbolize the paradigm shift at play in the post-industrial society which now strives to conceal its underlying material infrastructures. This is particularly true for the physical structures at the core of the digital world (data centers, undersea cables, rare earth mines, etc.), perpetuating the myth of the immateriality of digital images and files.
At some level, to make a photograph is always to work with time and write with light. Three millennia ago, in the mountains of what is now called central Oregon, molten embodiments flowed up to this realm. [...] Flow Retreat is a way of thinking beyond the scale of our individual human lives and in relation to the vertical axis of existence that connects the stars to the core.
Joseph O'Neill
My photography aims to open and expand your awareness of your urban environs. Manmade and natural light I expose the architectural highlights of my subject. Focusing on lines, shadow, and color as they combine to give each building its own character.
Agnieszka Piasecka
In her work she uses alternative and historical photographic processes and video art archiving balance between the not so clearly defined past, presence, future and imagination. She often plays with the notion of ontology of the photographic image, its tangibility (or lack of it) and explores themes of memory and archive.[…]
With photography, I navigate between worlds, exploring the tangible and the intangible, and what happens when they visually collide. By altering and combining photographs, I am looking for ways to reimagine the original image.
These images are from my series “Thin Places”, which explores the intersections between the natural world and the realm of spirituality. Thin Places are elusive - they may only reveal themselves when the light dances with them to a very specific rhythm. They speak to us through vibration more than sight or sound. Where the veil between this world and the other becomes porous, where one experiences an unexpected sense of connection, these are Thin Places.
Eliza Tsitsimeaua-Badoiu
For this monochromatic flowery series, I wanted to explore throughout this surreal concept the depth of a feminine feeling, providing the viewer with the chance to dive deeper into the multiple layers that lay beyond the surface of the feminine emotions. The frames stand for a constant search for identity and one can immediately detect the uninterrupted flux of inner processes, synonym to the feminine mental forms of both self-derision and interior blossom. […]
Eszter Varga
It is a special kind of the macro photography, experiment with colorful lights. As I turn the lens, the view is similar like looking into a kaleidoscope and feels like landscapes of a surreal „nowhereland” would appear. Special world of unique formations of lights, shadows and colorful shapes. They are visible only for a moment, unrepeatably and it's my passion to catch them with the camera. […]
My signature style includes precise composition, sharp contrasts, moody atmosphere and symmetry. Of these, the contrasts are the most what I’m chasing every day on the streets. The sunnier the day, the more I look for shadows. Street photography has also taught me to look at the city in a different way, to look for exceptions and small glitches to pick up small beautiful details from those moments.
[…] The film by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais “ Statues also die” begins like this: “When men die, they enter into history. When the statues die, they enter into art. This botany of death is what we call culture.” The resonance with different organic elements of the Bois de Vincennes where those remains are located became obvious. This is why this series, Lost Worlds (2021) is intentionally designed to work in duo.
In my series 'Do you need a hand?', I think about how this traumatizing experience and depression transform me and my identity. My inspiration came from a theory about the nonlinearity of time. [...] The character of my pictures is trying, by all means, to fix himself, to stop the movement. As a result of this inner work, mutations occur that turn the character into something new, unlike himself.