Debra Bloomfield
MONUMENTAL LANDSCAPES
Ansel Adams
Bruce Barnbaum
Debra Bloomfield
Pat & Rosemarie Keough
Robert Glenn Ketchum
Stephen Johnson
June 5 through July 10, 2004
Opening Reception, Saturday, June 5, 2 - 5 p.m.
The Fahey/Klein Gallery is pleased to present a unique exhibition of grand proportions. Since the invention of photography, photographers have sought out beautiful and vast parts of the world to make images of awe inspiring geological marvels in icy, arid, lush, dangerous, and monumental locations. This exhibition features six respected photographers who have made landscape photographs throughout their careers. Their impressive images from such locations as Antarctica, American southwest desert, Yosemite Valley, and Alaska's Tongass rainforest, include large-scale black and white and color photographs. The "Monumental Landscape" exhibition includes a 108 inch oversized photograph by Ansel Adams, "Santa Clara Valley, California, 1950."
Ansel Adams (1902- 1984) is considered by many to be the definitive landscape photographer. Throughout his long and prolific career his work has come to exemplify the purest approach to the photographic medium. Yosemite Valley was a lifelong inspiration. He is forever associated with a visual sense of the redemptive beauty of nature as well as his concern for the preservation of the environment. His philosophy embodied an approach to perfect the realization of his photographic vision through his technically flawless prints. He developed the zone system - a widely used systematic approach aimed at pre-visualization of the final print. Ansel Adams was instrumental in the founding of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art and the Friends of Photography.
Bruce Barnbaum, in the past thirty years, has become an expert image-maker in landscape photography. He has mastered the understanding of light, texture and composition, while creating breathtakingly smooth images of sand dunes and penetrating rocky outcroppings. His craftsmanship is translated in the beauty and quality of his rich black and white photographs. His previous publications include Tone Poems - Book 1, and Visual Symphony. His images have appeared in several books and magazines and is widely exhibited and represented in both private and public collections.
Debra Bloomfield has traveled to the American southwest desert three or four times a year for the past ten years. Each trip she traveled further into the Four Corners region where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah intersect. She photographed primarily on the Bureau of Land Management property, which has been carefully preserved in its purest state by the Native American Indians. Her resultant images are beautifully sculptural forms with skies filled with bursts of brilliant colors. "Bloomfield's photographs seem predicated upon the possibility that something like an authentic experience of the region can still be snatched from the interstices of what the place has become - is becoming." (Douglas Nickel, Four Corners) Bloomfield's career spans three decades and often explores the relationship between internal and external worlds. Her rich color palettes traverse the line between painting and photography. She has been an educator in the San Francisco area since 1977 and her work is included in numerous museum collections.
Pat & Rosemarie Keough are a husband and wife team who are accomplished photographers, authors, designers, and publishers. In the past decade their work has been devoted to what they have named the "Explorer Series." The have created photographs from remote places of interest from around the world. Their recently published book Antarctica is comprised of one of the most stunning and diverse color portfolios ever assembled about this great white continent. The variety of their imagery encompasses wildlife, landscape, and abstract patterns in nature. Geographically, the images transport one from the windswept polar plateau of the interior to the majestic, mountainous coast, and the off-lying islands to the icy seas and surrounding stormy Southern Ocean. Antarctica is the recipient of 19 prestigious awards including World's Best Photography Book and Nature Photographer of the Year.
Robert Glenn Ketchum is "widely renowned for his breathtaking color photographs of the natural world." He has dedicated his 30-year photographic career to the issues related to natural resource management and habitat protection. His exhibitions and lectures have created critical public focus for the little known wild lands such as Alaska's Tongass rainforest, areas of Canada and the Northwest Territories. Ketchum has been previously listed by American Photo as one of the 100 most important people in photography. "His vibrant, encompassing photographs reveal a destination with which few of us are familiar but one that has a stunning beauty and scale." (Rivers of Life) The centennial edition of Audubon named Ketchum as one of the one hundred champions of conservation "who shaped the environmental movement of the twentieth century".
Stephen Johnson is internationally recognized as a digital photography "pioneer." His photography explores the concerns of a landscape artist working in an increasingly industrialized world. His work also concentrates on refining the new tools of digital photography and empowering individual artists to use these tools to express their visual ideas. Since 1989, Johnson's photographic work has explored the capabilities of the computer as a new photographic and design tool. He is completing work on a ten-year endeavor called With a New Eye, a groundbreaking digital photographic look at American national parks. Johnson's photographs have been exhibited, published and collected in Europe, the US and Japan. His photographs are part of the permanent collections of many institutions including the Oakland Museum, the Getty, the City of New York, and the National Park Service. Corporate collections include Apple, Minolta, and the Packard Foundation.
