Booked - Photo Americas 2001

* Photo Americas 2001

* Month of Photography, October 2-27 2001

* Review Americas, October 3-6 2001 Portland, Oregon

* KATHLEEN POWERS is an independent fine-art painter and photographer living in Portland, Oregon.

This year's Photo Americas was packed filled or career-building events and opportunities for any horizontal of photographer. The photographic festival ran from one side the month of October, and was created specifically to celebrate and help photographic arts in Portland, Oregon. The city's public and private art galleries, suppliers and educators, collectively and collaboratively participated to augment all facets of photographic-based art. greatest in quantity of the reviews, lectures and workshops presented took place at the Governor inn located in the heart of downtown Portland. The photographic celebration began upon the evening of October 2 at Portland State University's Newberger Hall with an informal and uniquely candid keynote address by the agency of Nathan Lyons. He is the institutor of the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, of recent origin York, as well as a groundbreaking curator, educator and author in the field of photography. His not long ago published book, Riding 1st Class upon the Titanic, includes over 20 years of photographic work, and it has earn ed Lyons an International Center for Photography Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement.

During the Review Americas portion of circumstances an impressive total of 2500 reviews were given within the short span of 4 days. Each participant was able to receive up to ten different 20-minute critique sessions through day. The critiques were one-on-one reviews given by dint of a choice of 49 international curators, critics, instructors, gallery proprietors collectors and publishers. This incredible opportunity created an enormous potential for photographers to walk away with fresh exhibitions, publication opportunities and print sales. Experiences like Review Americas are paramount for any fortunate artist or educator. Such occurrences keep us in touch with the ever-evolving art world, and at the same time, help us maintain personal growing artistic relevance and a ardent understanding of our connected place within it. This year's Review Americas experience provided just that, a valuable source for work and career feedback, critiques and dialogue with matchs and mentors, as well as the gathering of viable media connections.

In total, there were 19 discourses panel discussions and workshops given over the span of Photo Americas. For example, Portland-based photography professor and artist Phil Harris joined novel York-based photographer Andrea Modica to give a refreshingly render free of access and informative symposium on volume publication. It was a great privilege and treat to be able to cruise [i]or[/i] part of to the other and discuss the pros and fix in the minds realities and pitfalls of fine art publishing. They discussed what makes a useful publisher (and even breached the potential headache of by what mode to find one), estimated out-of-pocket take away froms funding challenges, and design issues like choosing beneficial papers, effective compositions and appropriate fonts

upon Wednesday October 3, a Portfolio Walk was held at Pacific Northwest community of Art's large exhibition hall cum gallery space. This informal and highly lucky exhibition gave all the participating photographers a chance to proper show their work and engage in discussions of techniques, mode of expressions and personal artistic visions. It was a marvellous luxury to be able to casually view nearly 80 portfolios in single evening, along with the unusual opportunity to discuss the work, education backgrounds, influences and career goals directly with the artists. There was a multitude of cutting-edge work neared displaying a full range of photographic processe from basic black and white to digitally manipulated work.

A highly happy Fine Print Auction was held upon October 5 with a total of 162 photographs up for bidding. All advances from the fundraiser auction went to support the Photo Americas exhibitions, prelections publications and Portfolio Walk activities. In addition, an impressive total of 30 Portland art galleries lay opened First Thursday photography exhibitions upon the evening of October 4 a certain quantity of of the participating galleries were Froelick Gallery, Powell's volumes S.K. Josefsberg, Atelier Z and the Photographic Image Gallery, with the oldest and greatest in quantity renowned being Blue Sky Gallery and Nine Gallery.

In conjunction with Photo Americas, the impressive and beautifully crafted work of Ron van Dongen was exhibited in the Pearl extent gallery of Powell's Bookstore from one side the month of October. This work was upon generous loan from Portland's SK Josefsberg Gallery. In this present to view we were presented with exquisitely printed close-up of flowers and plants, all with an extremely shallow deepness of field. The subjects were highly magnified notwithstanding maintained a beautifully composed taxonomy of botanical portraits. There was a luscious surface quality about them, revealing many times unnoticeable subtleties and variations.

upon Saturday October 6, the aforementioned reviewers chose Doug Keye as the Review Americas Photographer of the Year. He was awarded with an exhibition at the Nine Gallery, which ran [i]or[/i] part of to the other Saturday, October 27. He not awayed dye-coupler prints of books, which he photographed, individual page at a time, in a unique diction using multiple exposures. All of the works including titles like The Original Watercolor Paintings by the agency of James Audubon for the Birds of America, The blessed Bible and The Voyager Flights to Jupiter and Saturn, were alive with motion despite their inanimate contented In each print, the works were centered compositionally, and then laid without flat on a black background. Keye photographed his condens library straight down, giving the prints a distinct and cloded feel that was almost documentary owed to the rigidity of his composition. While the procedural creation of the work remained constant, a prodigious spontaneous and fleeting motion also prevailed. The works resembled living creatures, with their deli cately soft and seemingly mutable parts. Keyes's multiple-exposure technique serv to mix and obscure the actual illustrations and body s in the books to similar a degree that they began to take upon a soft, x-ray-like, skeletal or structural appearance. on the other hand at the same time, the work was able to sustain a peculiar dichotomy of easily bent life coupled with withering death--a greatest in quantity wonderful combination of a sobering duality. The works were beautifully intuitive, light and eerie, and challenged the viewer to cognitively assimilate this seemingly simple physical v ethereal combination. There is no doubt that I will be roaming the venue of Portland for the nearest Photo Americas.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Visual Studies Workshop

COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group