In Tripping the Light Fantastic, the world’s simplest wonders are made extraordinary through the lens of photographers from across the globe. Everyday focal points are uniquely captured in this grand display of thought provoking images and technical mastery. From breathtaking depictions of nature to dramatic portrayals of the human condition, this exhibit will revise the way we see the world.
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Cariappa Annaiah
 
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Elegant and sophisticated in their crisp simplicity and strong use of negative space, Cariappa Annaiah's striking digital photographs recall the iconic works of Robert Mapplethorpe. Cariappa works with a minimalist approach, using the powerful properties of light to capture the hidden beauty of nature's everyday surroundings. Often set against a simple black or white background, Cariappa's works possess a subtle Asian aesthetic evident in his masterful use of asymmetrical balance. From the graceful curve of a crimson tomato, to the delicate lace of a flower's skeleton, Cariappa's works expose the often ignored wonders awaiting those who are careful enough to spot them. His adept photographer's eye and inquisitive spirit work together to produce works that are quietly joyful in the beauty of life.
Born and raised in India, Cariappa honed his strong aesthetic by observing his surroundings in Bangalore. An award-winning artist, Cariappa Annaiah now lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.
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"Dramatic Lily (edition of 5)"
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"Rear Guard (edition of 5)"
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Gary Auerbach
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Whether it is his spellbinding portraits of Native Americans or his imaginative architectural images, Gary Auerbach’s photographs transport one to another era.
In the ‘Night for Day’ series, Auerbach photographs at night with an 8x10 view camera and prints his images in photogravure. The gravure process gives Auerbach a way to put the touch of his hand in the intaglio wiping of each print. Using the negative of a night image, he creates a result that has an impressionistic quality, somewhere between the setting of night and the dawn of day. Auerbach’s work was most recently included at the Musee Jenisch near Geneva, in a survey exhibition of prints representing etchings, engravings, gravures and photogravures from the 1400’s to the contemporary. Notable artists in the exhibition included Goya, Degas, Rembrandt and Strand. Fifteen numbered portfolios, as well as individually signed and numbered gravures from ‘Night for Day’ and an alternate series, ‘We Walk in Beauty’, will be available. Auerbach lives and works in Tucson, Arizona. |
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"Notre Dame Day (edition 15)"
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"Eiffel Tower Day (edition 15)"
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Alfredo Esparza
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Alfredo Esparza's black and white photographs draw on the viewers' desire for human warmth and intimacy by placing lonely human figures in settings that evoke the alienating conditions of modernity. Esparza's compositions are structured around heavy geometric spaces. Stark lines, cast by shadows and water, dominate many of his photographs. In others, alienating architectural spaces and modern settings emphasize the isolation of a single person, or increase the impression of distance between two people. Esparza's photographs invite the viewer to take refuge in the human figures set amidst these cold spaces of modernity. His subjects are treated delicately and sensually, the soft warmth of their forms emphasized all the more by their jagged surroundings.
This is Esparza's first exhibition outside his native Mexico – where four solo exhibitions in 2007 testify to his growing success. This is indeed a terrific opportunity to witness an exciting young artist who will only become more important as his talents develop. |
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"Fisherman, 2004"
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"Palomas con Luna"
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R John Ferguson
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The photography of R. John Ferguson is an attempt to capture the unusual beauty and nuance concealed in everyday life. Working with both color and black and white film, he explores the natural world where reflection, undulating shadows, and dazzling light beckon to his creative spirit. Ferguson’s photographs present a visual puzzle for his audience, requiring them to look deeper to allow the imagery to permeate their imagination. "I want my art and my visions to be not only seen" Ferguson states, "but experienced by the viewers of today and the viewers of tomorrow."
Before ever exhibiting his photography, Ferguson was approached by a former student of Ansel Adams with the request that he share his work with the arts community. The subsequent show generated enthusiastic interest in his photography followed by newspaper articles, numerous awards and the publishing of his work. Recently acquiring representation in New York, Ferguson’s notoriety continues to grow. He lives and works in Terre Haute, Indiana |
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"Self Portrait Dove's Wing"
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"Baptismal"
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Roberto Grilli
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Roberto Grilli began experimenting with photography around his childhood home in Czechoslovakia at the early age of nine. His muses can be found in the natural world: trees, clouds, waves, waterfalls, and above all, the sun, as its splashes brilliant hues across the heavens at daybreak and dusk. Through the powerful medium of photography, Grilli has found ways to overcome the inescapable turmoil of human existence. “When I came to Ireland my hunger to take pictures revived.” Grilli explains, “The beautiful and also wild country gave me back my life.”
Grilli’s photos capture the timeless qualities and rhythms of the natural world, while conveying the very human emotions of hope, longing and repose. The artist’s technical skills are easily discerned in his work, with crisp forms and a graceful explication of color. Grilli’s work has continued to capture the public’s interest as his photography is published and exhibited in a variety of international venues. Roberto Grilli lives and works in Ireland. |
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"Stones in Mist"
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"Hope"
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Perri Hart
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As an avid naturalist, Perri Hart takes beautiful photographs of the outdoors with a quality of light humor, drama and innocence. Capturing a variety of moments, from deer grazing in a summer pasture to the frigid dusk on a blustery lake, Hart recognizes the beauty to be found in every type of landscape. "I create images that you not only see, but feel," she states. Working in both black and white and color photography, Hart creates unmistakably crisp images while experimenting with different lens and weather-induced effects.
She majored in Photography, Film, and Video at the School of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston and gained experience in commercial photography before returning to her hometown in Upstate New York to work with her father Johnny Hart, the celebrated cartoonist of B.C. and Wizard of Id. Last year Hart opened her own gallery in the art district of her hometown of Binghamton, New York. Currently Hart divides her time between her gallery, continuing her father’s legacy in cartooning, and her life’s work, photography. |
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"Left Behind on Pikes Peak"
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"Peace"
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Trinidad Mac-Auliffe
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With her background in anatomical drawing, and in theatre, Chilean-born photographer Trinidad Mac-Auliffe brings the painted human body into contemporary photography in dramatic and visually stunning ways. Spattered, dripping, and speckled designs highlight organic features like eyes, the twist of a neck, hands displayed either in prayer or protection. Painted skin transforms the human body into a theatrical stage for Mac-Auliffe, rendering the human body as an enigma, with the boundary between the mind and the soul as her subject.
There's vibrant longing in her portraits but also melancholy, a mood which can be found in her flowers as well. These are portrayed as torn or incomplete, unopened buds. There is a sense of potential being, of a mysterious persona eternally emerging from under paint or from gesture. The vulnerability of this never-ending self-creation pervades the photography of Trinidad Mac-Auliffe, for, as she says, "vulnerability is. . .what makes us wonder, think, cry, laugh, love and hate." |
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"Materia 02"
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"Delivery Dialog 03"
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Mary Mansey
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Mary Mansey’s beautifully abstract photographs examine the interplay of light and color as they reflect against the rippling surface of water. These reflections poetically mirror the artist’s own emotions experienced at the time at which each photograph was captured. Mansey’s photographs portray the tenuous stillness of water, a delicate peace easily disturbed and altered, underscoring the fragility of nature as a whole. Mansey’s images of a natural landscape element possess an otherworldly quality, echoing the artist’s desire to portray the “double mirror” aspect of the water. Her photographs encourage the imagination to flow, envisioning for a quiet moment another world just beneath the surface.
Mary Mansey’s fascination with color, light, and water began as a child, when she was profoundly struck by the beauty of the Mediterranean Sea. Today, the award-winning photographer lives and works in France and has exhibited her work in Italy, Germany, New York, and Los Angeles.
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"Sailing"
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"Bouquet de Roseaux"
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Rei Niwa
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Rei Niwa is interested in documenting and introducing the world to traditional Japanese culture. Niwa’s work has a strong sense of place and interconnectedness.
His photos are an interesting combination of documentary and portraiture photography, only one of the juxtapositions that make his work so captivating. Niwa was born during the time when Japanese traditional practices were beginning to decline. The result is that his photos are timeless; we see the traditional trappings of the festivals Niwa regards as his main focus, but there is always a hint of modernity that snaps us back to the present, the background betrays the subject: the profile of a man in trendy glasses, a woman in a polyester skirt at the edge of the frame. He takes advantage of depth of field in his photographs and this further accents the contradictions in the scenes as well as society. Niwa began photographing at the age of 13 and belongs to belongs to the All-Japan Association of Photographic Society and The Photographic Society of Japan. |
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"A Beautiful Parade Float"
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"An Admiration"
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Adolfo Orozco
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Adolfo Orozco, a Colombian architect and photographer, was raised on art and reverence of nature. He recalls his mother enrolling him in art classes at an early age, and taking long drives with his father through his homeland, paying homage to the universe through photography. Standing “on top of clouds… like a great mantle of cotton,” he developed keen aesthetic sensibilities and a devotion to nature that have prevailed and largely influence his art today.
The esthetics of architecture, the rituals of his Indian culture, and the magic of the landscapes of Colombia are the pillars of Orozco’s work. Each photo is a prayer beckoning the viewer to bow and acknowledge the glory of nature. His photographs rest on his spiritual foundation, forcing reflection and meditation. Brilliantly capturing nature’s quietest moments, a sleepy, amber sun peeping through the trees wakes the viewer’s sense of both awe and contentment. Adolfo Orozco’s work is exhibited throughout Colombia, where he currently lives. He is represented by the Agora Gallery in New York.
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"Espejo del Silencio"
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"Estrella Roja"
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Jacqueline Rosenberg
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“The beauty of people in photography goes beyond the reality,” Jacqueline Rosenberg states, “but that's why we love it.” Rosenberg’s two decades as a fashion photographer served as a sort of vocational training for her artistic career; and her trade has now been fully converted into passion. She takes as her subject matter women of varying types—but all strong, all emancipated in their femininity. Before transferring her photos onto canvas, Rosenberg superimposes upon them images of beads, jewels, geometric figures, out-of-proportion body parts from other photos—a practice that results in framing the internal discourse of each piece, allotting a viewing experience that is more than the sum of its parts.
Her approach reminds one of Picasso and how his distortions were always meant to convey information, to guide the encounter. If there’s a message Rosenberg hopes to convey, it’s that we should accept people of all kinds, and that we ourselves should be* *independent and free in our self-expression, our passions, and our joys. |
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"Indian Queen"
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"Stones in Heaven"
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Paola Tarasconi
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Texture, line and a subtle sense of narrative imbue the photography of Paola Tarasconi. Capturing the urban images of Genova, Italy, Tarasconi’s unique perspective and eye for contrasting patterns and ideas, grants the viewer a wholly original view of modern reality. Tarasconi earned her degree in Architecture from the University of Venice and this specialization has no doubt informed her photography, as her work shows a special interest in the elegance of connections between people, buildings and roads.
In Tarasconi’s work, all elements work together to tell a story about interconnection between self and world. She says, “through photography we can see something like a third eye of the person, the eye that we can’t see… the kind of eye that doesn’t have any color or shape, but the eye which contains our whole hidden world.” Such insights into the relationship between art and human nature continue to inform Tarasconi’s work amd to intrigue the viewer, whose perspective will be enriched by this departure from ordinary perspectives. |
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"Taking a Break in “Piazza Caricamento”, Genova 2006"
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"Every Day Meeting, Genova 2006"
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J. Thrush
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Hungarian photographer Judit Rigó, also known as J. Thrush, presents the beauty of the natural world through the lean line of a tree, the diamond-like brilliance of an icy day. Her scenes are full of spatial depth, the camera moving the viewer deeper into an ecstatic space. Thrush grew up in the Hungarian countryside and her intimate connection with nature, combined with an artist’s eye for form and perspective, makes her work serene yet mysterious; she beckons us off the well-worn path, to consider the road we did not choose as something more than a dalliance. Her landscapes are beautifully balanced and barely contained, full of rhythm and lush with the hues of nature.
Thrush began seriously photographing while she was a teenager. Her goal has always been to capture the simple loveliness of the world around us. She has exhibited her work in Hungary and lives and works in Gyöngyös, near the Matra Mountains. |
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"Way to Faith"
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"Illusion"
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Stefanie Young
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Stefanie Young, a photography lecturer at WINTEC in her native New Zealand with an MFA from Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, works with stylized black and white compositions. Fleeting images of places and faces are blurred by movements and obstructions. The resulting mysterious aura places her works in an uncertain context, sometimes resembling strange everyday moments, elsewhere taking on the allegorical weight of posed scenes. Through manipulations of light and lines, a unique, leading aesthetic unites her varied subjects.
Despite the ostensible object of her images, Young foregrounds lines, movements and light, guiding us over her prints dynamically so that viewers hone in on details before taking account of the entire composition. By keeping our eyes moving through her works, aesthetics amplify the subjects’ mystery and ambiguity. Partially hidden women’s engaging stares caught in a blur, corners of empty rooms shown out of focus, all work to conceal the subject and engage the imagination. Stephanie Young generates captivating intrigue less through her subjects than through her craft. .
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"Surrender"
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"Punchline"
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Joe Zammit-Lucia
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British photographer Joe Zammit-Lucia will knock the wind out of you. A former physician, his universal tenderness is obvious; he lays bare a beauty that one occasionally glimpses, but is often eluded, in other photographer’s work. The nobility he brings to his black and white portraits of endangered animals, and his skillful use of light and shadow, culls empathy in the viewer. To say he anthropomorphizes his subjects is to vastly underestimate them; what you sense in the photos is real, and Zammit-Lucia has the power to make you see it. By removing his subjects from their surroundings one is forced to confront the power behind these images.
The stunning, minimalist composition and lovely use of contrast give his work a documentary feel. Zammit-Lucia has been photographing since he was 16. He has shown in the US and the UK and donates all the profits from his work to charities. |
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"Resignation"
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"Freedom Dive"
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