Pinhole Faces and Far Off Places
Little Gorgeous Things Presents "Pinhole Faces and Far Off Places" (Pinhole Photography by Joe Dore, Marian Roth, Martin R Anderson and David Ellis)
September 22-October 5, 2006 Reception Friday Sept.22, 2006, 7-9 PM
From Friday, September 22 through Thursday, October 5, Little Gorgeous Things will present an exhibit of pinhole photography entitled "Pinhole Faces and Far Off Places" featuring works by Joe Dore, Marian Roth, Martin R Anderson and David Ellis. A reception will be held on Friday, September 22 from 7-9pm in the courtyard.
Joe Dore
Cambridge, MA native Joe Dore began his career as a photographer while studying at the Chevy Chase Community Center, Washington, DC in 1977. Over the years his work has been featured in a group show called "People Pieces" (1994, Berkeley, CA) as well as a one-man show "Similar Irregularities" (2003, Brooklyn, NY). Mr. Dore is presently involved in several ongoing art projects, which include "The Face Maker" for Art*O*Mat and "DNLOIS" for the New York City subway system. He resides in Brooklyn, NY with his wife Betsy and their two children, daughter Ruby and son, Dexter.
Joe Dore: Artist's Statement. "The simplicity of the PINHOLE camera excites the heck out of me. I love the fact that I can get a sharp photo from a tiny little hole in a piece of brass. It's how photography began--and I like feeling connected to the start of this medium. In exploring my Robert Rigby pinhole camera I had some basic questions: 1. How close can I get? 2. How distorted will the photo get? 3. How weird can I make people look?
In order to answer these questions I made the PINHEAD contraption. Basically, it is a ring light with a place to put your face close to the pinhole and hold it relatively still. It is amazing to me how all the faces look so similar yet are of very different looking people. We are all distorted. We all have similar irregularities." -JD
Marian Roth
A self-taught photographer, Marian Roth has been making pictures for more than twenty-five years. She was born in Coney Island and grew up in Brooklyn, NY. In 2000 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship. She has also received the New England Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Photography, the C-Scape Residency and Fellowship (to convert a dune shack into a pinhole camera) and was awarded grants from the Barbara Deming Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts. Roth currently teaches at the Fine Arts Work Center, the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, and PAAM, as well as serving as a mentor at Provincetown High School. Marian lives year-round in Provincetown.
Marian Roth: Artist's Statement.
"I began taking pictures with pinhole cameras almost twenty years ago, being drawn by their apparent simplicity and intensely personal quality. With pinhole photography one must be willing to let go of a lot of control of the image and trust inspiration and circumstance--rather than any cerebral process--to make the picture. This is because the photographer cannot actually look through a pinhole camera as one might with a lens camera, nor can one be very exact about exposures. I like this mystery of not really knowing what I will get. I especially like making my own cameras and the challenge of converting things to camera, and I suppose it suits me to have cameras that are neither precious nor precise. I work with liquid silver emulsions, which I brush onto watercolor paper and with color materials such as IIforchrome Direct Positive Paper and C-41 paper."
Martin R Anderson
One of Boston's emerging photographers, Martin R. Anderson works extensively in the alternative photography field with over 40 pinhole cameras of his own design. His first solo exhibition, "Natural Magic, Pinhole and Other Photographs" was shown at Boston's Gallery Black and White in 2004. His photograph "Brighton Pier Pinhole" won Third Prize in Krappy Kamera VII, a national juried exhibition at the Soho Photo Gallery in New York City in 2005. In 2006 his pinhole photograph, "Paris, Tulieries: Alexandre Combattant" won First Place in Art & Antiques Magazine's annual photography contest. In June and July of 2005, Martin received a fellowship for a three-week Artist-in-Residency at C-Scape dune shack in Provincetown where he created a new portfolio of pinhole self portraits. He has taught pinhole photography for two summers at Castle Hill Center for the Arts in Truro. Examples of his work can be found on his website www.martinranderson.com.
Martin R. Anderson: Artist's Statement.
"For the last few years my photography has become more and more based on alternative processes to picture making with pinhole cameras I create myself from tin cans and cardboard tubes. The exaggeration and distortion made by pinhole cameras creates pictures that I see as a form of photographic impressionism that can be, as Cezanne wrote of his approach to painting, "faithful to a striking or beautiful object and a modern abstraction--a moving harmony representing nothing." The pinhole cameras become my collaborators in making the kinds of impressionistic pictures that are like those that are always moving through our minds; the reflections, glimpses and shadows that are the pictures of our memories and of our dreams."
David Ellis
David Ellis is an accomplished photographer and educator constantly searching for creative boundaries to explore and expand. Working with a wide variety of cameras and formats from lens, converted vintage box cameras and Polaroid to handmade pinhole, and most recently, experimenting with digital and digital video cameras adapted to pinhole. His experience and style extend from fine art, editorial and documentary, to recent historic and architectural survey projects for the Providence Preservation Society. David teaches photography at Rhode Island School of Design, and has taught workshops at various locations including Castle Hill Center for the Arts in Truro, MA and AS220 in Providence, RI. Ellis's works are held in the National Museum of Fine Arts, Mexico City, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Patzcuaro, Mexico and the Getty Collection in Los Angeles, CA. In 1980 he as selected for the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Artists. David currently divides his time between Cape Cod and Providence, RI.
David Ellis: Artist's Statement.
"I see the photograph as an "artifact"- a record of the photographic experience where the act of recording the moment is at the same time the creation of the moment. It is the documentation of my presence in the experience as much as it is of the image of the experience it produces. I am interested in revealing the "essence" of what I am seeing, more than the fact, to feel the poetics of a moment in time portrayed by the image. Often, the camera will "see", or the process of capturing an image will produce glimpses of what our vision misses as we scan the world around us. Following that first glimpse or impulse intuitively in response to the "something-about-this" quality of a moment, it is an attempt to reveal the magical, mythical or mysterious in the ordinary. In the pinhole process, personally creating and using cameras constructed from tins, containers and an assortment of converted or retrofitted old cameras further enhances the spirit, beauty and chanciness of the image while bringing me closer to my experience."
September 22-October 5, 2006 Reception Friday Sept.22, 2006, 7-9 PM
From Friday, September 22 through Thursday, October 5, Little Gorgeous Things will present an exhibit of pinhole photography entitled "Pinhole Faces and Far Off Places" featuring works by Joe Dore, Marian Roth, Martin R Anderson and David Ellis. A reception will be held on Friday, September 22 from 7-9pm in the courtyard.
Joe Dore
Cambridge, MA native Joe Dore began his career as a photographer while studying at the Chevy Chase Community Center, Washington, DC in 1977. Over the years his work has been featured in a group show called "People Pieces" (1994, Berkeley, CA) as well as a one-man show "Similar Irregularities" (2003, Brooklyn, NY). Mr. Dore is presently involved in several ongoing art projects, which include "The Face Maker" for Art*O*Mat and "DNLOIS" for the New York City subway system. He resides in Brooklyn, NY with his wife Betsy and their two children, daughter Ruby and son, Dexter.
Joe Dore: Artist's Statement. "The simplicity of the PINHOLE camera excites the heck out of me. I love the fact that I can get a sharp photo from a tiny little hole in a piece of brass. It's how photography began--and I like feeling connected to the start of this medium. In exploring my Robert Rigby pinhole camera I had some basic questions: 1. How close can I get? 2. How distorted will the photo get? 3. How weird can I make people look?
In order to answer these questions I made the PINHEAD contraption. Basically, it is a ring light with a place to put your face close to the pinhole and hold it relatively still. It is amazing to me how all the faces look so similar yet are of very different looking people. We are all distorted. We all have similar irregularities." -JD
Marian Roth
A self-taught photographer, Marian Roth has been making pictures for more than twenty-five years. She was born in Coney Island and grew up in Brooklyn, NY. In 2000 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship. She has also received the New England Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Photography, the C-Scape Residency and Fellowship (to convert a dune shack into a pinhole camera) and was awarded grants from the Barbara Deming Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts. Roth currently teaches at the Fine Arts Work Center, the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, and PAAM, as well as serving as a mentor at Provincetown High School. Marian lives year-round in Provincetown.
Marian Roth: Artist's Statement.
"I began taking pictures with pinhole cameras almost twenty years ago, being drawn by their apparent simplicity and intensely personal quality. With pinhole photography one must be willing to let go of a lot of control of the image and trust inspiration and circumstance--rather than any cerebral process--to make the picture. This is because the photographer cannot actually look through a pinhole camera as one might with a lens camera, nor can one be very exact about exposures. I like this mystery of not really knowing what I will get. I especially like making my own cameras and the challenge of converting things to camera, and I suppose it suits me to have cameras that are neither precious nor precise. I work with liquid silver emulsions, which I brush onto watercolor paper and with color materials such as IIforchrome Direct Positive Paper and C-41 paper."
Martin R Anderson
One of Boston's emerging photographers, Martin R. Anderson works extensively in the alternative photography field with over 40 pinhole cameras of his own design. His first solo exhibition, "Natural Magic, Pinhole and Other Photographs" was shown at Boston's Gallery Black and White in 2004. His photograph "Brighton Pier Pinhole" won Third Prize in Krappy Kamera VII, a national juried exhibition at the Soho Photo Gallery in New York City in 2005. In 2006 his pinhole photograph, "Paris, Tulieries: Alexandre Combattant" won First Place in Art & Antiques Magazine's annual photography contest. In June and July of 2005, Martin received a fellowship for a three-week Artist-in-Residency at C-Scape dune shack in Provincetown where he created a new portfolio of pinhole self portraits. He has taught pinhole photography for two summers at Castle Hill Center for the Arts in Truro. Examples of his work can be found on his website www.martinranderson.com.
Martin R. Anderson: Artist's Statement.
"For the last few years my photography has become more and more based on alternative processes to picture making with pinhole cameras I create myself from tin cans and cardboard tubes. The exaggeration and distortion made by pinhole cameras creates pictures that I see as a form of photographic impressionism that can be, as Cezanne wrote of his approach to painting, "faithful to a striking or beautiful object and a modern abstraction--a moving harmony representing nothing." The pinhole cameras become my collaborators in making the kinds of impressionistic pictures that are like those that are always moving through our minds; the reflections, glimpses and shadows that are the pictures of our memories and of our dreams."
David Ellis
David Ellis is an accomplished photographer and educator constantly searching for creative boundaries to explore and expand. Working with a wide variety of cameras and formats from lens, converted vintage box cameras and Polaroid to handmade pinhole, and most recently, experimenting with digital and digital video cameras adapted to pinhole. His experience and style extend from fine art, editorial and documentary, to recent historic and architectural survey projects for the Providence Preservation Society. David teaches photography at Rhode Island School of Design, and has taught workshops at various locations including Castle Hill Center for the Arts in Truro, MA and AS220 in Providence, RI. Ellis's works are held in the National Museum of Fine Arts, Mexico City, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Patzcuaro, Mexico and the Getty Collection in Los Angeles, CA. In 1980 he as selected for the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Artists. David currently divides his time between Cape Cod and Providence, RI.
David Ellis: Artist's Statement.
"I see the photograph as an "artifact"- a record of the photographic experience where the act of recording the moment is at the same time the creation of the moment. It is the documentation of my presence in the experience as much as it is of the image of the experience it produces. I am interested in revealing the "essence" of what I am seeing, more than the fact, to feel the poetics of a moment in time portrayed by the image. Often, the camera will "see", or the process of capturing an image will produce glimpses of what our vision misses as we scan the world around us. Following that first glimpse or impulse intuitively in response to the "something-about-this" quality of a moment, it is an attempt to reveal the magical, mythical or mysterious in the ordinary. In the pinhole process, personally creating and using cameras constructed from tins, containers and an assortment of converted or retrofitted old cameras further enhances the spirit, beauty and chanciness of the image while bringing me closer to my experience."