Magic Realism in Santa Fe
A provocative group show at the Photo-Eye Gallery in Santa Fe, caught my own photo eye recently. Featuring ten photographers the collective spirit of the work is magic realism, to borrow a term from literature. Genres redefined include landscapes and still lives and talismanic animals predominate as we are drawn into mysterious lands that can only exist in dreams.
Tom Chambers
Pennti Sammallhti
Zoe Zimmerman
Terri Weifenbach
I had only seen two of the photographers before, one being Nick Brandt, the South African photographer who is well known for his romantic invocation of the wild animals that entranced our childhood, or at least mine ( I grew up within range of the Washington’s National Zoo where on a quiet night you could hear the gibbons howling). The other is Washington’s own, Terri Weifenbach who challenges how we perceive the world with her graceful and surprising explorations into the strange territory of photographic perception. You can see the show at http://www.photoeye.com/Gallery/RepresentedArtists/homepagePE.cfm. The actual show closes on April 30th; maybe the virtual show will be available longer.
Frances by anon.
That mysterious hole in Terri’s picture reminds me of another mysterious hole in a photograph, this one found in that excellent compendium of snapshots at www.squareamerica.com. There is something sinister about the obliteration in this picture: who knows what emotion provoked that curiously precise mutilation?
But are we talking about holes here or entrances into another world? Would we find poor Frances restored again if we crossed into that world? Abelardo Morell leads us into the world of words with his Dictionary Hole and recently I saw a website http://www.entrances2hell.co.uk which featured entrances into hell. The photographer there, Dr. Rae Gates has been busy photographing all the entrances into hell that he can find in England.
Abelardo Morell
Entrance into hell - Grantham, Lincolnshire, UK
by Dr. Rae Gates
One of my photos could easily be an entrance into hell; at least I had an uneasy feeling when I was photographing it. I had no desire to open the door; in fact I was quite glad it didn’t open on its own while I was taking the picture. This entrance is a good deal more grandiose than those in England; in this country apparently, the devil lives a bit larger than he does in the UK where the entrance is likely to be a side door in a filthy warehouse.
Door, North Carolina Mark L. Power