The Light Room summer group show at 3rd Street Gallery | the artblog

The Light Room summer group show at 3rd Street Gallery | the artblog
10/6/15, 1:03 PM
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The Light Room
summer group show at
3rd Street Gallery
By Michael Lieberman August 20, 2015
[Michael zeroes in on three
photographers to highlight a show by
members of the artist-run photography
cooperative, The Light Room. - Artblog
editors]
The Light Room’s 5th Annual Summer
Photography Exhibition demonstrates the
daunting curatorial challenge of
presenting a coherent exhibition of the
work of eight photographers working
without an organizing theme. I do not
think that the members of the Light
Room and the 3rd Street Gallery have
accomplished that, but there are some
wonderful pieces here, and obviously a
group of talented and skillful
photographers.
COMICS
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The Light Room summer group show at 3rd Street Gallery | the artblog
10/6/15, 1:03 PM
Perhaps due to the immediacy of the
medium, sometimes you can be taken off
guard by a photographic image, captured
by its perspective, by its treatment of
light or its subject matter, or by the story
that it tells or suggests. Many of the
photographs in this exhibition provide
such an experience, and the work of
three of the eight Light Room
photographers stands out.
Street photography in Philadelphia
Ronald Corbin
“When I Pictured”
2014
15” x 11”
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The Light Room summer group show at 3rd Street Gallery | the artblog
10/6/15, 1:03 PM
Archival Inkjet Print
Courtesy of the Artist
Ronald A. Corbin is a Philadelphia street
photographer. His Kensington Project
and his Center City Series, both of which
are represented in this exhibition, are
reminiscent of Jeffrey Stockbridge’s
Kensington Blues and Zoe Strauss’s I-95
Project. Corbin though often works closer
up than either Stockbridge or Strauss,
and in black & white, creating a rare
intimacy in his photographs.
Corbin has walked our city streets and,
shooting with film in natural light,
documented the lives of the
dispossessed in brilliant and mournful
portraits. His pieces capture the
humanity of his subjects and starkly
remind us, as Emile Durkheim theorized,
that our social organization is
accomplished and fortified, at least in
part, by drawing lines between deviance
and normality. Whether featuring the
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the defiant, we get a glimpse through
Corbin’s work of the line that separates
THEM from US, and perhaps sacrifices
THEM for US, and the work suggests
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that too often we are talking about THEM
when we should be talking about US.
In Corbin’s “When I Pictured,” seen
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The Light Room summer group show at 3rd Street Gallery | the artblog
10/6/15, 1:03 PM
above, a young, bejeweled & tattooed
woman wearing a leopard dress and cap,
perhaps a working woman, perhaps a
drug addict, perhaps neither, leans
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against a wall in Kensington, and the
graffiti on the wall, which she did not
inscribe, but might have, reads: “When I
pictured my future as a little girl in pigtails
it never included sucking cock for rocks –
What about you?” What about you?
Searching for universal rhythms in
landscape
Richard Boutwell
“Algodones Dunes, California”
2001
10” x 10”
Carbon Pigment Print
Courtesy of the Artist
Accomplished Bucks County
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The Light Room summer group show at 3rd Street Gallery | the artblog
10/6/15, 1:03 PM
photographer and teacher, Richard
Boutwell, apprenticed with the
remarkable Philadelphia photographers
Michael A. Smith and Paula Chamlee.
The series he has selected for this
exhibition are landscapes from the
American West and titled Go West –
Looking Back, Looking In. What they
really are, however, as Boutwell explains,
are meditations upon the search for what
Edward Weston termed “universal
rhythms.” Reproduced below is one of
his carbon digital prints of the Algodones
Dunes in Southern California. The
shifting shapes and shadows of the
dunes of course are archetypal, and
reminiscent of our own forms. Boutwell
not only records their majesty and grace,
he entices us to fathom both their
enormity and fleetingness, and through
them our own place in the universe.
An ode to the passing of time
Al Wachlin Jr
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The Light Room summer group show at 3rd Street Gallery | the artblog
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“Castle Hill Road, Washburn”
2008/2011
14.5” x 20”
Hand coated Silver Gelatin Print on Gampi
Paper
Courtesy of the Artist
Al Wachlin, Jr. is the coordinator of the
Light Room. The series of his
photographs included in the exhibition is
titled Potato Houses of Aroostook
County, and highlights old potato barns
of Northern Maine which are displayed
next to their sleek contemporary
counterparts. The old barns fittingly are
shot with film and presented in black &
white on handmade and hand-coated
paper, while the new ones are printed
digitally with pristine color on specially
coated metal. The contrast whips the
viewer through time and tells the
frightening tale of what has become of
the small family farms that once
dominated the region. In Wachlin’s B&W
photograph Castle Hill Road, Washburn,
pictured here, a magnificent, but now
bowed and dilapidated old potato house
gradually is being absorbed into the
abundant landscape. The composition of
this photograph is extraordinary: notice
the rich dark sky, the dramatic backlit
white clouds and the subdued oval of
sunlit vegetation in the foreground. The
photograph gloriously suggests the
passage of time.
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The Light Room summer group show at 3rd Street Gallery | the artblog
10/6/15, 1:03 PM
A show for photo buffs as well as
those who just love great imagery
The work of five other Light House
members is represented in the exhibition:
Mary Ann Broderick-Pakenham, G. A.
Carafelli, Carlos Chan, Annarita Gentile
and Josh Marowitz. The platinum /
palladium prints, gelatin silver fiber
prints, and hand-painted salt
photographs of Carafelli, Chan and
Marowitz respectively present a
fascinating tutorial about these rare
techniques of photography and printing.
Gentile exhibits strikingly vivid color
digital photographs of Chinese New Year
celebrations and the Cherry Blossom
Festival, both in Philadelphia. Finally
there are Ms. Broderick-Pakenham’s
large portraits of dogs, which are printed
in color on canvas. In what I experienced
as a slightly bizarre touch, some of the
dogs are presented wearing fashion
accessories — one with a bow tie, one
with a necklace. You will either love or
hate this series, but in any event the
effect is jarring and I thought distracted
from the far more subtle and restrained
work of the other photographers
(perhaps with the exception of Ms.
Gentile).
There is great technical virtuosity in this
exhibition, together with many images
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The Light Room summer group show at 3rd Street Gallery | the artblog
10/6/15, 1:03 PM
that are emotional, thought provoking or
contemplative, and more than enough to
overcome what I perceived to be a lack
of overall curatorial coherence. For those
of us who are not connoisseurs of
photography it is a compelling and
informative exhibition, well worth
experiencing.
The Light Room, 5th Annual Summer
Photography Exhibition, 3rd Street
Gallery (on 2nd Street), Through August
30th, with a closing reception 2-5PM that
day.
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TAGS 3rd street gallery, 5th annual
summer show, al wachlin, photography,
richard boutwell, ronald a. corbin, the light
room
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