EXHIBITION DETAILS
Contemporary Portraits
January 31 - February 23, 2019
Gallery Hours - Wednesday – Saturday 12 – 6 pm
Artist Reception - February 8, 2019
Exhibition Location
The Art Lab
239 Linden St, Fort Collins, CO 80524
Selected Artists:
Geoffrey Agrons, Edward Bateman, Michael Darough, Rory Doyle, Barbara Ehlers, Teri Fullerton, Jennifer Georgescu, Anna Grevenitis, Joyce P. Lopez, Anthony Marchetti, Andy Mattern, Stephanie Pain, Rebecca Palmer, Marcy Palmer, Michael Pointer, Michelle Rogers Pritzl, Leah Schrententhaler, Tamara Staples, Nadia Stone, JP Terlizzi, Ada Trillo
STATEMENT
Juror:
Ann M. Jastrab is an independent curator, editor, and writer. She writes extensively about photographers and photography for the acclaimed website All About Photo where she is the Editor-in-Chief. She is currently the gallery manager at Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco where she incorporates contemporary artists in with the living legends of photography. She worked as the gallery director at RayKo Photo Center in San Francisco for the past decade until their recent closure in 2017. Ann has curated many shows in the Bay Area while simultaneously jurying, curating, and organizing numerous exhibitions for other national and international venues outside of San Francisco.
Jurors Statement:
There’s the surprise of the moment when you part the grasses and you find the bride and groom staring back at you in an endless field. There is the oddity of a parrot being snuggled in bed and a dog sitting at the table, eyes askance, looking vaguely like an angry relative. There are faces obscured by shadows and hands and netting and machines and even a horse’s nose. All shrouded in mystery. There are also the defiant stares back at the camera, the daring, the bewilderment, the longing, the loss, the emptiness...the human condition.
With the hundreds upon hundreds of images entered into this call for portraits, I had a very difficult time whittling the number of pictures down to a mere forty. As I chipped away over the weeks, I realized that the images that made a cohesive show didn’t necessarily encompass every aspect of the genre of portraiture. I had to lose some fantastic street portraits and some startling documentary pictures and some tragic self-portraits and some heart-breaking images that didn’t relate to the photographs that were beginning to emerge as a set. The final selected images were more in the style of Arnold Newman’s environmental portraits, with a few wild cards thrown in like a tiny tableau with a towering face, two scenes sewn together carefully, but somewhat menacingly, and then an obsessive multi-lens pinhole photogravure self-portrait. (Sometimes the rule breakers have interpreted things in such a way that they can’t be ignored).
Looking at the selections, I wondered for a while if everyone had shifted back to a view camera on a tripod. Or maybe the images I gravitated towards were shot in a slower way. The rules as to what makes a compelling portrait aren’t hard and fast...they are fluid and I realize that this portraiture exhibition could have been one comprised of entirely b&w social documentary work. Or it could have been all-color studio shots. Or all self-portraits. Or all nudes for that matter. Or it could have been a show about family. I tried to strike a balance in subject matter and styles while also creating a show that held together and what I found were some wonderful moments, some hard moments too, balanced with a dose of humor which is perhaps something we all need right now.
I wish I could have had twice the number of prints in this show, but alas...there are only so many walls.
Ann M. Jastrab
