Photography

Two Big Reasons Amateur Photographers Are Afraid to Become

Two Big Reasons Amateur Photographers Are Afraid to Become

Becoming a professional photographer can be a scary thing, especially because, unlike a traditional job, the pathway to sustainable success is much more nebulous and often changing. What are the most common fears people have about becoming a pro? How can you mitigate those fears? This excellent video features an experience professional photographer discussing the topic. 

Coming to you from Scott Choucino of Tin House Studio, this insightful video discusses two of the most common fears photographers have over going pro, namely fear of leaving a day job and being unsure of how to market their skills. While these are important things to think about, I think it is also important to note, however, that fear is often a healthy thing. Being a professional photographer is a risky venture, particularly in today’s climate, and as such, it is a decision that should not be made lightly. I generally think that no one should go into a creative venture as a profession unless they cannot imagine themselves doing anything else, but if you have the passion, the talent, and the work ethic, it can be a rewarding and fulfilling career. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Choucino. 

New Bronx Exhibit Challenges Stereotypes With Extraordinary Photos of Everyday Life

New Bronx Exhibit Challenges Stereotypes With Extraordinary Photos of Everyday Life
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New York City stands out for being a place full of history, abundant in its vibrant diversity and life-enriching events for people from all walks of life. Many times, we don’t know what we’re missing.

A new exhibition hopes to change that in the Bronx through an array of photographs that portrays the borough’s daily life in a way that may often be underappreciated — or even unrecognized — by those who don’t live or spend time there.

It all starts with the Instagram account Everyday Bronx, which is part of The Everyday Projects global initiative that seeks to amplify local voices and champion a form of collective, grassroots storytelling.

Founded in 2014, the page exclusively features photographs of its followers, more than 43,000 strong, and seeks to inform public perspective of the Bronx by telling extraordinary stories of ordinary people.

Curated by Rhynna Santos, a Puerto Rican documentary photographer living and working in the Bronx, the page is populated daily by five volunteer members who support her passion. She’s also behind the exhibit, which features more than 50 photos and videos, mostly from cellphones, in what has become a sort of online archive of borough life.

“The Bronx suffers from having the most negative stereotypes in New York, but we know the truth, that this is not the case, that in this borough we have strong people.”

Rhynna M. Santos, exhibition curator and founder of Everyday Bronx

By encouraging fans to photograph their neighborhoods, Everyday Bronx encourages artistic expression by a variety of people, not just trained photographers, and creates a unique online archive of documentary images, Santos says.

“The Bronx suffers from having the most negative stereotypes in New York, from violence, poverty, not having a real culture, but we know the truth, that this is not the case, that in this borough we have strong people, that they really do a lot, and we are trying to tell that story,” she told Telemundo 47. “We have a very rich and beautiful history.”

(Lea esta historia en español aquí.)

Record store or restaurant? At first glance Beatstro seems like a shop that sells vinyls. But once you open the velvet curtain, a new world is revealed. This restaurant pays tribute to the birth of hip hop, and celebrates the rich culture of the Bronx through its menu and decor. (Video produced by Mariam Oke.)


“The most important thing for me is to show the photographs to more people, so they can see the talent that is here, that you don’t have to be a professional to show and give this kind of opportunity,” Santos added.

Her exhibition’s opening night had music, breakdancing and graffiti, celebrating the Bronx’s history as the birthplace of hip-hop and its role as an epicenter for creative art, music and dance.

“The reactions have been incredible,” Santos says. “One visitor told me, ‘I’ve had bad times, but you put up one of my photos and every time I feel bad I take it out and look at it.’ That’s the impact I thought we had, but seeing it, it’s really incredible.”


For this Foodie NYC segment, we’re checking out Beatstro. This restaurant pays tribute to hip hop and celebrates the rich culture of the Bronx. Mariam Oke reports.

Where can I find the exhibition?

It is held at the Bronx Documentary Center located at 614 Courtlandt Avenue, The Bronx, NY 10451.

What days is it open?

Gallery Hours: Thur-Fri 3-7PM & Sat-Sun 1-5PM

On view until May 14th.

Who is Rhynna M. Santos?

She is a Puerto Rico-born documentary photographer and teaching artist who lives and works in The Bronx. Santos’ art captures the beautiful, painful, funny, and infinitely complex lives and perspectives of people of color in her community.

For more information, go here.

Joelle Garguilo meets with Amaurys Grullon, Co-Founder of Bronx Native, who takes us on a tour to the Bronx Documentary Center, Moodie Records, Concrete Plant Park, and Seis Vecinos.

Lewisburg Photography Club invites submissions for Celebration of the Arts exhibition

Lewisburg Photography Club invites submissions for Celebration of the Arts exhibition

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From Staff Reports

The Lewisburg Photography Club, a special interest group of the Lewisburg Arts Council is hosting a photography exhibition during the 2023 Celebration of the Arts. The exhibition will be held April 29 through May 12 at the Community Partnerships Office at 328 Market St. in Lewisburg. Local photographers of all ages and skill levels are invited to enter the judged exhibition now through April 21. The exhibition is open to anyone within 30 miles of Lewisburg.

The exhibition will have three age groups: Adult (18 and older), Young Adults (13 – 17), and Children (12 and younger). The Adult age group will be further divided into the following categories: Macro, Black & White, Artistic, Traditional, and Lifestyle.

Each photographer may submit up to three photographs. An online entry form and show guidelines are available at LewisburgArtsCouncil.org.

This is a unique opportunity for local photographers of all ages to show what they can do without being juried, and see what other local photographers are doing as well. We also encourage children and youth to explore the art of photography and share their work in the show.

A panel of three experienced photographers will judge the work. Cash prizes will be awarded for Best of Show, first and second place in each age group and category. Ribbons will be awarded to Judges’ Choice, Peoples’ Choice, and third place in all categories.

An exhibition reception and awards program is planned for Saturday, May 6, from 2-4 p.m. with light snacks and beverages. Join us to celebrate the talent of our local photographers.

The 2023 Photography Exhibition is sponsored by Stephen J. Lindenmuth.

The Lewisburg Photography Club is a special interest group of the Lewisburg Arts Council. The club hosts educational presentations, critiques, photo walks, photo challenges, photo trips, workshops, and discussions on various aspects of photography. Visit LewisburgPhotoClub.org for more information or to become a member.

For more information please contact Lewisburg Photography Club Co-Chairs Sarah Binder and Penny Patterson at photoclub@lewisburgartscouncil.com.

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ArtDependence | Rinko Kawauchi receives the Sony World Photography Award 2023.

ArtDependence | Rinko Kawauchi receives the Sony World Photography Award 2023.

One of the most important Japanese photographers working today, Kawauchi has achieved international renown for her intimate and luminous images, capturing ephemeral moments of everyday life.

More than thirty images by the photographer will be shown at the Sony World Photography Awards 2023 exhibition, which returns to Somerset House, London from 14 April – 1 May 2023. The selection, made by the artist, spans over twenty years of her career and highlights significant milestones and themes across some of her most iconic series: Illuminance (2011), AILA (2004), Utatane (2001), and Ametsuchi (2013).

Kawauchi was born in 1972 in Shiga Prefecture, Japan and first began taking photographs at the age of 19. In the early 1990s she worked as a photographer for an advertising agency, before moving to a Tokyo studio to focus on making her own work. She first gained international attention in 2001 after the publication of three photobooks, Utatane, Hanabi, and Hanako. Two of the series went on to win Japan’s most prestigious award for emerging photography, the Kimura Ihei Award.

Kawauchi is influenced by Shinto, which holds that everything has a spirit or energy, called ‘kami’. Accordingly, Kawauchi’s lens is patient and empathetic towards its quotidian subjects: shimmering lights reflected in a mirror, a pair of hands braiding thread together, sunbeams flooding through the canopy of a forest. Her photographs have been compared to haikus, a style of short-form poetry originating from Japan which through its lines often reflects upon a wider meaning or truth. So too, Kawauchi’s spare visual language gives these seemingly small moments a sense of great weight and significance.

Image :Rinko Kawauchi, Untitled, from the series “Illuminance”, 2011, c-print, mounted on Alu-Dibond, ed. 2/6, 101 x 101 cm, courtesy PRISKA PASQUER GALLERY

The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art : Coyote Park : I Love You Like Mirrors Do – The Eye of Photography Magazine

The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art : Coyote Park : I Love You Like Mirrors Do – The Eye of Photography Magazine

The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art presents Coyote Park: I Love You Like Mirrors Do. The exhibition explores multi-disciplinary artist Coyote Park’s deep bonds – between loved ones, lands of origin, diasporas, and queer, trans and Indigenous kin – creating spaces of togetherness and liberation. Informed by LGBTQIA+ visual histories, I Love You Like Mirrors Do began with the artist’s research on figurative pairs across the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art’s collection, from silver prints by fin de siècle Prussian photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden, to erotic drawings by twentieth-century Japanese artist Goh Mishima, to the celebration of queer, Black love by contemporary South African artist Zanele Muholi. Gestures, backdrops, props, and other visual elements from collection works are borrowed and interpreted in Park’s tableaux, which centers on the artist’s own constellation of relationships and intimate entanglements.

As a Two-spirit, Indigenous (Yurok), Korean-American artist, Park works to expand the spectrum of queer representation, noting that “we are always looking for ourselves in art.” They embrace photography’s unique capacity for world-building: the single frame that still photography affords the viewer hovers in time, documenting ephemera and energetic connections between the artist’s past lovers, current partners, and those they hold close. In Park’s process of collaborative image-making, they capture the unspoken understandings of how they see and are seen, and the dynamic fluidity of both: a process underscored by the exhibition’s title. Through objects, gestures, and form, I Love You Like Mirrors Do iterates images of the self in relation to others: a self that is not intrinsic or inherent, but continually negotiated and produced. Park envisions love dynamics, lived and represented, as reflective and contingent. We are all mirrored refractions of one another.

Park’s is the first exhibition in The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art’s Interventions series which engages LGBTQIA+ artists and cultural producers to dive into the Museum’s collection and creatively present their research, building new narratives and interpretations from diverse subjectivities. The Interventions series offers a unique platform for public access to the Museum’s artworks, establishing a new avenue for showcasing the expansive and historical collection that Leslie-Lohman has acquired over five decades.

The end result is a dialogue, representing the shared histories and lived realities that influence the LGBTQIA+ community of today and the future.

I Love You Like Mirrors Do marks Park’s first ever museum exhibition. “The Museum is proud to support this pivotal moment in Park’s trajectory as an artist,” says Alyssa Nitchun, Executive Director at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. “Their ability to contextualize works from our collection and to offer a contemporary, intersectional perspective is acutely significant to Leslie-Lohman as a space that affirms and engages the past, present and future realities of LGBTQIA+ lives.”

“In these photographs, as with mirrors, the ocean and with my loved ones, my gender is a prism: it changes color based on the light refracted through it,” says the artist Coyote Park. “As I say to a lover in the film created for the exhibition, ‘I am not just the strength of my body, I am not the amount of hair, the deepness of my voice, I am not just read as boy or girl. I am not what a public perception projects on me.’ The film’s addition to the photographic work serves as a living organ of many voices: an ephemeral experience of memories between me and the loved ones in the photographs (Tee Jaehyung Park, River Gallo, Kaliko Aiu, Em Grotton, Ke’ron J. Wilson, Hercules Goss-Kuehn, and Bones Tan Jones).”

“It has been extraordinary working with Coyote Park for this first iteration of Interventions,” says Stamatina Gregory, Chief Curator at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. “Their process of research into LLMA’s collection, and their deployment of formal references within this new body of work has been playful, open, and intuitive. But more critically, these works are a reclamation: they move our queer visual histories toward more inclusive and radical forms of relation.”

The exhibition also features a section of artworks from the Museum’s collection from which Park drew inspiration. Featured pieces include artwork by Goh Mishima, Leah Michaelson, Li Ming Shun, Luigi & Luca, Marcelina Martin, Marion Pinto, Tee A. Corrine, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Yannis Nomikos, and Zanele Muholi.

About The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art
The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art provides a platform for artistic exploration through multi-faceted queer perspectives. We embrace the power of the arts to inspire, explore, and foster understanding of the rich diversity of LGBTQIA+ experiences. We aim to be a home for queer art, artists, scholars, activists and allies, and a catalyst for discourse on art and queerness. With a collection of over 25,000 objects and a research library of over 3,000 volumes, the Museum fosters experimentation and research through exhibitions, programs, educational platforms, and publications.

 

Coyote Park : I Love You Like Mirrors Do
Through July 16th, 2023
The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art
26 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10013
www.leslielohman.org
@leslielohmanmuseum

Peter Fetterman Gallery : The Power of Photography #29 – The Eye of Photography Magazine

Peter Fetterman Gallery : The Power of Photography #29 – The Eye of Photography Magazine

This is the 29th installment of the online series by Peter Fetterman Gallery called the Power of Photography highlighting hope, peace and love in the world. We invite you to enjoy and reflect on these works during this time.

Sarah Moon
L’été (The Summer), 1989
© Sarah Moon/Courtesy Peter Fetterman Gallery

The process of creation. Sarah has always engaged in the great dance of life on a level very few can reach. She has been given a special gift of observation and incredible insight which thankfully she shares with us.

Ralph Gibson
White Nude, 1989
© Ralph Gibson /Courtesy Peter Fetterman Gallery

Much of Ralph’s work is spare, sensual and profound like this image. He has lived a full and rich life which is thankfully still ongoing with great travel, adventures and deep encounters with many of world’s greatest painters, writers and photographers from Dorothea Lange to Marguerite Duras. But he can hold his own with them in terms of sophistication and productivity.Perhaps the hardest subject to contribute something fresh and inventive to is the female nude but here it is in front of you to marvel at in all its beauty.

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004)
Swan Lake, Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, USSR, 1954
© Henri Cartier-Bresson, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson/Courtesy Peter Fetterman Gallery

Henri was always very self-deprecating. I don’t think I ever heard the word “art” come out of his mouth when talking to him about his work. To call one of the greatest bodies of work produced in the 20th Century in any medium as a “trade” is of course quite amusing. No one was more a witness to the great moments of history than he was. He was the first Western photographer to be allowed to work in the Soviet Union and given incredible access because of his international reputation. No more so than the permission to photograph behind the scenes of the celebrated Bolshoi Ballet. His long out of print book “The People of Moscow” is a book collector’s gem. Of course, for me it was always a dream to own a great Degas painting but this image is up there with one.

Emmet Gowin
Edith, Chincoteague, Virginia, 1967
© Emmet Gowin Estate/Courtesy Peter Fetterman Gallery

I don’t think there is a more powerful, romantic, tender, intimate image in the history of photography than this one. Just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes. Emmet Gowin has spent many years photographing his wife Edith. They are more than just a series of images of her. He has created a novel about her. I find the emotion permeating this special one so intense and universal. It is almost a summation of a life fully lived through all its stages in one single frame. But in the end it is really about what it is to love and be loved.

Arnold Newman (1918-2006)
Martha Graham, 1961
© Arnold Newman, Arnold Newman Estate / Courtesy Peter Fetterman Gallery

Arnold Newman loved to shoot his subjects in their natural environments. That’s why he took his cameras over to 316 E 63rd Street on March 2nd, 1961 to capture the formidable Martha Graham. She was known as the Mother of Modern Dance, as important to her profession as Picasso was to painting or Stravinsky was to music or Frank Lloyd Wright was to architecture.

She stands in front of her rehearsal barre almost as if an arrow is about to pierce through her heart and she is ready to move to escape it and in the process move us with her power and sheer force of nature as she did in each her performances and creations.

Louis Stettner (1922-2016)
Times Square at Night, New York, 1952
© Estate of Louis Stettner / Courtesy Peter Fetterman Gallery

Louis was mentored and encouraged by the great Paris-based, Hungarian-born photographer, Brassaï. Brassaï was renown more than anything for his incredible night time images shot in Paris in the 1930’s.

It was hard for Stettner not to have been influenced by one of his key teachers. Louis always told me that “Times Square” was the belly button of New York. He lived nearby and would often go there in the evening with his camera. People would come from all over New York to take in a movie, or a play or just to walk around. He was fascinated by the constant waves of humanity to be found there.

I also think on this particular night he must have also been stimulated into action by the billboard for Elia Kazan’s great, great film “On The Waterfront”. No one who ever saw it when they were young could ever forget the power of it not to mention Brando’s haunting performance.

Wynn Bullock (1902-1975)
Child in Forest, 1951
© Estate of Wynn Bullock / Courtesy Peter Fetterman Gallery

I think Wynn is being perhaps being a little too modest here. I think to create an image of such beauty and power you would have had to devote a lifetime of dedication and experience to the task at hand. It is so far removed from just a simple act.

It was one of the stand out and most popular images in Edward Steichen’s 1955’s celebrated “Family of Man Exhibition” which later toured the world to enormous acclaim. This is an image one can stare at for hours and meditate on its various layers of meaning. But the one thing everyone can agree on is its luminosity as a print.

Neil Leifer
Portrait of Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers posing during Camera Day at Ebbets Field. Brooklyn, New York, 8/12/1956
© Neil Leifer / Iconic Images / Courtesy Peter Fetterman Gallery

This is a remarkable photograph of Jackie Robinson, one of Baseball’s all-time greats and the first player to break down the game’s racial barriers. What makes it remarkable is that Neil was only 14 years old at the time. He went on to have an illustrious career turning sports photography into an acknowledged art form. It was taken on “Camera Day” at Ebbets Field, a tradition where once a year the players posed for the youngsters in the stadium before the game began. Neil managed to hustle his way into a great position and created an iconic image of one of his heroes in his final year in the Major Leagues. Pure magic.

William Klein
Wings of the Hawk, 42nd Street, New York, 1955
© William Klein / William Klein Estate / Courtesy Peter Fetterman Gallery

Here William Klein captures all the edginess and allure in the signage and lighting of a pre-Disney clean up of Times Square. It’s like Scorsese in “Taxi Driver” but a generation or two before. You are caught up in the crowd, in the energy of the street and the allure of the movie marquee lighting. Cinema would be an allure for Klein too and he spent a big part of his career making films like the fashion world send up “Who are you Polly Magoo?” and the wonderful documentary “Muhammed Ali: The Greatest.”

Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002)
Ernest Hemingway, 1957
© Yousuf Karsh, Yousuf Karsh Estate /Courtesy Peter Fetterman Gallery

I have been enjoying the new Ken Burns/Lynn Novick PBS series on Ernest Hemingway. They are such superb filmmakers and it seems that whatever subject matter they turn their attention to, they unravel so many new and surprising levels of story-telling. Hemingway is no exception. It is not just a story about one writer’s tempestuous life. It really is a story about America and indeed the human condition itself. And staring at this great Karsh portrait, one of his best, is the perfect complement.

Peter Fetterman Gallery
2525 Michigan Ave, #A1
Santa Monica, CA 90404
http://www.peterfetterman.com

The Power of Photography is now a book published by ACC ART Books.

Peter Fetterman : The Power of Photography
ACC ART Books
Pages: 256 pages
Size: 7.87 in x 9.06 in
ISBN: 9781788841221
$45.00

https://www.accartbooks.com/us/book/the-power-of-photography/
www.accartbooks.com

The Selects Gallery – Par Excellence : Chic : Capturing that ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’ in Photography – The Eye of Photography Magazine

The Selects Gallery – Par Excellence : Chic : Capturing that ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’ in Photography – The Eye of Photography Magazine

The Selects Gallery presents an exhibition in collaboration with Par Excellence, the luxury artisan showroom dedicated to French craftsmanship. Entitled “Chic: Capturing that ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’ in Photography”, the exhibition creates a world centered around the glamour, sexiness, freedom, and creativity of couture fashion and editorial photography. The curation celebrates French style, reimagined by international fashion photographers.

The exhibition features renowned fashion photographers Terry O’Neill, Jacques Olivar, Kenneth Willardt, and Sylvie Castioni, alongside up-and-coming Nigerian photographer Adebayo Jolaoso, with images of supermodels Esther Cañadas, Doutzen Kroes, and the iconic Brigitte Bardot.

Terry O’Neill is one of the most celebrated and collected fashion photographers, best known for his work capturing youth culture in the 1960’s. In photographing the rise of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and Brigitte Bardot, among many others, O’Neill defined celebrity and created a visual language for the representation of icons.

French photographer Jacques Olivar is known for his elegant, narrative-driven photographs; taking formalistic cues from classic film, Olivar imbues his models with a sense of character and mystery. Fashion is a critical element in his work, as he creates the world of the image around the clothes, letting them create the sense of character and mystery.

French photographer Sylvie Castioni is known for her intimate portraits of female models, which aim to connect to the subject’s sacred femininity and soul. Her images create a world of fashion and couture which is centered around women embracing their innate femininity and power.

Danish photographer Kenneth Willardt, a major contributor at Harper’s Bazaar US, is a versatile fashion photographer, known for his beauty images as well as his highly editorial fashion portraits. Marked by a combination of precision and joyful spontaneity, his modern aesthetic is highly emblematic of contemporary fashion photography.

Nigerian photographer Adebayo Jolaoso combines the classic fashion photography imagery he was raised seeing in magazines with a contemporary Nigerian eye. Through his technical, elegant, and imaginative images, he embraces diverse forms of self-expression and celebrates the diversity and beauty of Nigerian models.

The exhibition is the first photography exhibition to be hosted in the space after the renovation by interior designer Thomas Pheasant.

Chic: Capturing that ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’ in Photography
From March 30th to June 29th, 2023
Par Excellence Showroom
344 Bowery, 5th Floor, NOHO
New York, NY 10012
Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm
Contact us for your private appointment: [email protected]

www.theselectsgallery.com
@theselectsgallery

Galleria Valeria Bella: Benjamin Juhel: The Whisper of Twilights – The Eye of Photography Magazine

Galleria Valeria Bella: Benjamin Juhel: The Whisper of Twilights – The Eye of Photography Magazine

Produced in 2022 in California, “Le Murmure des Crépuscules” is the new series of images by Benjamin Juhel evoking the silence, the absence, and the long time offered by the night. In this project, he finds an approach to the interval between public space and private space, and questions the necessary distance of viewpoint between the city as a common space and individual habitat. Taken at nightfall, when the streets darken and the interiors light up, these images are a muffled wandering in a zone in transition. By maintaining a distance and a theatrical form, it offers a cinematographic and lively look at the urban territory. Each image offers a waiting situation and opens a narrative field to our imagination.

We find in this series the approach of penumbra and a singular vision of color, chiaroscuro and what light as a glow can give to perceive by taking the time to look. The plasticity of the images, always very pictorialist, close to drawing, the choice of a carbon fiber Japanese paper, continue to support the plastic approach of Benjamin Juhel’s photography, more inclined to make objects/images of fiction, poetic and remote from reality.

Benjamin Juhel uses the societal functions or images of cities to re-examine our relationship to representations, to the society of entertainment and consumption, and to the making of power. Without wanting to denounce it invites to question by creating poetic situations and images where the time of the night makes silence and loneliness exist. Benjamin Juhel offers images with textures and lights close to painting and cinematography. The darkness of the images invites contemplation, to take the time to discover what is given to see, leaving time for the gaze to grasp the details appearing when our eye gets used to the shades of black.

Benjamin Juhel : Le Murmure des Crépuscules
from April 12 to 28, 2023
Galleria Valeria Bella
Via San Damiano
20122 Milan. Italy
www.valeriabella.com

Amos Nachoum’s photography exhibit coming

Amos Nachoum’s photography exhibit coming
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Acclaimed wildlife photographer and adventurer Amos Nachoum will bring his photography to the CoMMA stage on Tuesday, April 18, at 7:30 p.m. While his interest in conservation began with sharks, he looks to bring attention to the most fragile regions of the underwater realm with preservation of the environment foremost in his mind. His favorite way to raise awareness and stimulate passion for the ocean is to help guests experience it firsthand. For those unable to join him on his adventures, he brings the oceans to the world through his photography and public speaking engagements.

“This will be an incredible evening of visual awe as Amos takes you through his explorations with pictures almost too incredible to believe,” said Sharon Jablonski, director of CoMMA. “His work is inspiring and breathtaking, a show for audiences of all ages and one we are excited to bring to Morganton,” she added.

People are also reading…

Honored as 2019 SeaKeeper of the year, Amos is the subject of the recently released documentary “Picture of His Life,” which follows Amos on an expedition in the Canadian Arctic to swim alongside and photograph polar bears. For National Geographic, he was team leader for separate photo expeditions to document the Red Sea, great white sharks, and killer whales.

His photos and essays have appeared in hundreds of publications around the globe, including National Geographic, Time, Life, The New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Le Figaro, Terra Sauvage, Airone, Mondo Somerso, Der Spiegel, Unterwasser, and many more. His work has also been included in the books The Living Ocean, The World of Nature, and Oceans. He has appeared on National Geographic Explorer, Today, and Good Morning America and featured in People, Esquire, and Money magazines. Amos’s photography has won Nikon, Communication Arts, and BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards.

Above all else, Amos loves people as much as wildlife. His concern for both inspired him to co-found Israel’s Marine National Park on the Red Sea. Tickets for the speaking engagement and amazing photography show as a backdrop are $35-$40 for adults and $30 for students (plus sales tax). For additional information or to purchase tickets, contact the CoMMA box office at 828-433-7469 or visit www.commaonline.org.

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Exhibition showcasing works by Taiwanese photographers opens

Exhibition showcasing works by Taiwanese photographers opens

Taipei, April 12 (CNA) “The Eye of Abstraction,” a photography exhibition featuring 99 abstract artworks by 25 seasoned Taiwanese photographers, opened on Wednesday at the National Center of Photography and Images (NCPI) in Taipei.

The exhibition brings together abstract works by Taiwanese photographers over the years in the hope of establishing a theoretical framework for the genre of Taiwanese photography, which has been dominated by photojournalism and documentary photography, exhibition curator Chang Kuan-ho (章光和) said at the exhibition’s opening ceremony.

The exhibition is divided into four sections: “Figurative and Non-Figurative, “Sense and Sensibility,” “Gestalt” and “Material Mediums,” Chang said.

“Figurative and Non-Figurative” features works by photographers showcasing “unexpected beauty” in everyday life captured at unique angles, Chang said.

“Sense and Sensibility” juxtaposes artworks by renowned Taiwanese abstract painters and abstract photos taken by photographers, and asks viewers to compare the two art forms, Chang said.

“Gestalt” showcases photography that explores Gestalt psychology, proposed by psychologist Max Wertheimer in 1912. This holds that when people see images they do not understand they spontaneously appeal to the laws of symmetry, closure, continuity, proximity, similarity, and figure-ground organization — the ability to identify a figure from the background, Chang said.

His “Botany 0.5” on display at the exhibition is a collection of images created by tapping into Gestalt psychology, Chang said.

The images are created by scanning slices of plants and compiling them in computer software to create continuous left-right and up-down symmetrical images that present a kaleidoscopic effect, Chang said.

Meanwhile, “Material Mediums” focuses on materials and mediums used in photography and explores their intrinsic beauty, Chang said.

National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts Director Liao Jen-I (廖仁義) said that the museum was tasked with creating the NCPI, which opened in April 2021.

However, the vision of Taiwanese photographers more than a decade ago to establish a Taiwan museum of photography and images has not yet been realized, Liao said.

The boundless creativity demonstrated by Taiwanese photographers shows that they deserve a museum dedicated to photography, Liao said, calling on Deputy Cultural Minister Sue Wang (王時思), who also attended the opening ceremony, to lobby for funding from the Ministry of Cultural to make such a museum a reality.

Wang said in response that the output by the many Taiwanese photographers calls for a larger venue than the NCPI to be established.

The creation of a Taiwan museum of photography and images is a high priority for Culture Minister Shih Che (史哲) and herself, Wang said, adding that she hopes the goal can be achieved as soon as possible.

Photographers have a special mission, one that highlights things often neglected in the world and defines what the world looks like to humankind, Wang said.

Mere mortals cannot know the truth about the universe, but they can attempt to determine what the universe is like through photographers’ eyes, Wang said.

One philosophical theory posits that nothing happens by accident, and everything happens by the design of the universe, Wang added.

The photographs on display could support that theory, as they seem to have been captured by coincidence but actually offer people glimpses into what the future holds, Wang said.

Wang invited the public to visit the exhibition and get to know the Taiwanese photographers who serve as a vanguard observing the world, Wang said.

The free exhibition runs until July 30.