Lisa's image "Spark Face" was accepted into the Portrait Exhibit at The Darkroom Gallery ( Essex Jct., VT)

Lisa's image "Spark Face" was accepted into the Portrait Exhibit 

at The Darkroom Gallery ( Essex Jct., VT)

Selections for The Portrait by juror Amy Holmes George are now posted on our website. See them here: http://www.darkroomgallery.com/ex107

The Portrait

EXHIBIT OPENS ON April 4th, 2019

Artists' Reception scheduled for April 13th, 2019

Juror: Amy Holmes George

Gallery Info The Darkroom Gallery

12 Main St. Essex Jct., VT 05452-3132

Hours: Monday-Saturday 11:00-4:00 and by appt.  802-777-FOTO(3686)

The Darkroom Gallery is dedicated to recognizing photographers and exposing their work to the public. 

A portrait! What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound.

The above quotation comes not from a photographer, but from 19th century French poet (and art critic) Charles Baudelaire. It's still an accurate observation, maybe even more incisive with the many changes in image-making that have taken place since 1859.  In the age of the selfie and ubiquitous photos of people both famous and unknown it's sometimes hard to imagine a new way of presenting a human likeness, and yet photographers are doing it.  It's said that the portrait differs from the candid (or street) photo in that the subject of the portrait knows that she or he is being photographed, and even that caveat is no longer a hard and fast rule.

For this exhibition, we asked contributors to interpret the portrait in any way they chose. It could be a self-portrait, a formal portrait, a from-the-hip shot of someone whose attention was caught, or even a random body part. Manipulation of the image was permitted as long as the primary subject was from a photographic source in any medium.  Thinking, or seeing, outside the box was very much encouraged, and many of the contributors stretched the concept of the portrait to the extreme. The result is an eclectic exhibit of creative approaches to photographing people (and one rooster).

Exhibit Opens: 4 April 19
Artists' Reception: 13 April 19 17:00
Exhibit Closes: 12 May 19

Juror's Statement:
"First, I would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to all the artists for sharing their personal vision in photography with me! You made my task as juror both challenging and rewarding. I was genuinely excited to discover so much diversity in approach and technique, along with rich, creative interpretations on such a traditional and timeless theme. It seems that photography, a medium of limitless possibilities, has enabled artists to refresh and also reinvent the familiar, long-standing conventions of portraiture. From quiet to compelling, simple to complex, curious to captivating—the works selected for this exhibition range widely in visual as well as conceptual exploration, conjuring stories that exist beyond the frame, surprising me over and over again with something unexpected."
- Amy Holmes George, March 2019