Alumni Archives - Page 2 of 12 - John Paul Caponigro

Alumnus Jim Graham Featured In Shutterbug

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“I took this image on a workshop in Spruce Head, Maine, right after a breakup,” Graham says, “and only later realized that it represented smoothness and calmness on one side, tumult on the other, and a line of demarcation in between.” A pivotal image, it led to Graham’s evaluative question: What do I see?”
Here’s an excerpt of alumnus Jim Graham’s feature in Shutterbug.
“We assumed the first thing Jim Graham does in order to create his elegant landscape images is decide how to isolate his subjects from distracting backgrounds to achieve the always-desired single subject, clearly defined.
We were wrong. The first thing he does is ask himself: What do I see? Then he asks: How do I use the camera to communicate the feeling I have about what I see?
The answers, coupled with his skill at the striking use of color, form, and light within the frame, often result in symbolic representations of personal stories and feelings far beyond the literal subject in the frame.
Simply put, Jim Graham is out to say a lot more than ‘Isn’t this a pretty picture?'” …
Read the rest here.
Find out more about Jim Graham here.
Read more Alumni Success Stories here.

Alumnus Sam Krish's Polar Exhibit Opens June 14

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Sam Krisch opens his second solo exhibit of the year “Above Zero: Photographs From The Polar Region” Sunday, June 14 at the Allentown Art Museum in Pennsylvania.
In this post, Sam shares what he learned on his journey to creative success. You’ll find it inspiring and helpful.
Here are a few highlights.
“John Paul’s mentorship as well as the inspiration and encouragement of countless others led me to work harder, to dig deeper, to find new places: physical locations, internal emotions, and fresh ways of seeing. Hard work and constant study added to my skills. Through the fellowship of an international group of artists I found community and stimulation: a vast ocean of knowledge and inspiration.”
“Each particular curator sees an artist’s work in a particular way, interprets it, and often brings out a way of seeing the work that the artist hadn’t considered. A great pleasure for me is working with professionals who approach the presentation of my work in a different way. They ask probing questions for the lectures, gallery guides, and docent training. I always learn something from exhibiting my work and I am often surprised by people’s reaction to it. Some are emotionally moved, some want to know technical details, some may not like it. It’s the risk you take when you exhibit.”
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Alumnus Michael J Quinn’s New Print Portfolio

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I have been honing my photographic skills over the last several years. Making strides in composition, storytelling and mechanics of photography, I still lacked some finer processing skills and the art of printing. I decided that a print is the ultimate goal of a photographer. There is just something very tangible, very permanent about a print. Anybody can flick through a series of images on an electronic device. But actually taking the time to make a print, matting, framing, hung on the wall and lit well -takes considerable more effort. It also then requires more contemplation by the audience. I think they place more weight and value on the print than in electronic form. They are more willing to commit more time with the print.

During the span of a year, I completed both of John Paul’s Intermediate and Advance printing classes. At that point, I believed that I had achieved the skills required to attempt my own Print Portfolio.

There is just something substantial about the physical print. Let’s face it, we can casually look through tons of images on our electronic devices. They are there and then gone. But having a book full of prints is something completely different. You engage two more of your senses, touch, and smell. Every book has a certain feel and personal experience to it. It evokes more of an emotional response than the electronic equivalent.

So my goal with this project was severalfold.
1. Create a body of work of 24 images
2. Improve my image processing
3. Improve my print quality / skills
4. Share with as many people as I can
A decision had to be made on the format of the book. Landscape, Portrait, or Square. I deiced that the square format was the most versatile of the three. With a square book, I could print any aspect ratio that I wanted and not feel constrained to a particular style. Since I knew this book was going to be a work in progress and may change over time, I thought being versatile was a good trade-off versus being locked into a portrait or landscape format.

The next decision that I had to make was the size of the book. I based this partly on the common size of paper available. The other influence was what kind of reaction I wanted from people when they viewed the book. I made 5 prints on 13×14 inch and 17×18 inch papers and then just stapled them together to simulate the two sizes of the book I was considering. I printed horizontal, vertical and square images. I had my own opinion and then solicited several peoples opinions. The larger size won hands down. You would not think that 4 extra inches would make that dramatic of a difference but it really did. It took the scale of the book from something casual to something cherished. The larger size was just so much more engaging.

The paper choice for my Epson 9900 printer, (after some experimentation) Epson Ultrasmooth. It brought an extra dimension of depth to my ice images. The warmth of the paper gave an extra separation to the printed images. I decided that the easiest form factor would be to use 17″ wide roll paper. Then I would just allow the printer to cut the sheets to a length of 18″. This way I would not have to do any post printing trimming of the prints.

For the physical book, I had a custom binding post book and slip cover made. I choose the binding post style so that it would be easy to replace prints and so that I could completely change the theme of the book if I desired. For materials I choose Black on Black on Black. This might be generic, or called corporate, but I liked the neutrality of it and its future potential. Each of the three surfaces were a different material, so that added a subtle variation to the book. I added just a splash of Red into my debossed logo. The inner front and back sheets are sanded mylar. This essentially adds an end sheet to the book and enhances the experience when opening the book.

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I learned a lot through this process. It was a great growth experience. Having a project focuses your mind and creativity. Completing a project gives you a sense of accomplishment. Sharing the experience – I hope I can inspire all of you to do something wonderful.

Find out more about Michael J Quinn here.

Alumn Cira Crowell – Exhibition & Book – "Envisioning Ecstasy"

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In the summer of 2013 I had the fortune of travelling to Ladakh, India, a remote Himalayan kingdom that is now far Northwestern India, bordered by Pakistani controlled Kasmir and Chinese controlled Tibet. Ladakh’s high desert rises from valley floors at 12,000 feet to the mountain peaks at 20,000ft. Water from the Indus River is skillfully directed through lush fields then on to irrigate countless other valleys in India. The Ladakhis live in carefully organized communities of adobe homes where they maintain cattle and yak, pashmina goat herds, make mud bricks for export, hone their traditional crafts, keep cultural ways of life and practice an intense spirituality. It is a place where monasteries seem to float above military bases and vast expanses that shimmer in the intense, clear light. Translated as “The Land of High Passes” Ladakh is a region of sunshine and snow, of dark temples and bright spirits.

I happened to meet fellow photographer Christopher Michel in Delhi when he was doing what he does best, photographing people with his happy-go-lucky-how-could-you-say-no direct approach. We happened to have the same somewhat unusual camera and lens combo so I struck up a conversation. Little did I know we would be traveling to the same place and often shooting standing shoulder to shoulder with several thousand other people.

Faster and Faster

One hundred and fifty thousand ethnic Tibetans were gathering in Ladakh for the ancient Kalachakra ceremony, a two thousand year old ten-day teaching given by Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. I went as a student of life, to see and experience with camera in hand but no specific assignment or shot list. It was not easy. The mid-summer heat of India was as hard on the equipment as it was on the attendees. It was difficult to breathe, move, and photograph in the dust, smoke, heat and an international crowd of so many, packed into a tight space and hurrying over long distances to get there. There were near mob-scene moments as well as times of great kindness that transcended language barriers. The intense sun cast deep shadows in the desert while the traditional adobe architecture had dark interiors often only illuminated with butter lamps and a single strong shaft of light. The experience was overwhelming and required great openness to each moment, the physical stamina to endure heat and altitude as well as the willingness to play well with others.

Every extra moment from sunrise to starry night was spent exploring the stupa fields, monasteries, city of Leh and village life with friends met along the way. Chris’ focus on the essence of each moment was an inspiration and his photographs reflect his incisive eye, whether the subject was people or place. During the two weeks in Ladakh we did not share work or even review our own images. There was limited electricity for anything beyond charging batteries. Several weeks later I happened to come across a blog article about Chris’ work in Ladakh and immediately suggested a collaborative show to benefit Tibetan culture at Tibet House US. Fortunately Chris agreed to my out-of-the-blue request and the curator of Tibet House US, Zola Nyambuu, was happy with the show we proposed. So began the coincidental collaboration of “Envisioning Ecstasy.”

The show has forty black and white photographic prints of landscape, portraits and details of Ladakh during the Kalachakra. These range from arid desertscapes to lush irrigated fields reflecting the mountains. There are images from the Kalachakra as well as incongruous graffiti overlooking the capitol city, Leh. Curious camels, luminous nightscapes and the famously painted Indian trucks balance the spiritual iconography. A traveling circus with a lotus-decorated ferris wheel loomed above the vast desert providing an unforgettable personal and photographic experience.

“Envisioning Ecstasy” also has a conceptual aspect in the form of eleven large-scale lumenographic prints based on illustration based photographs originally sketched during the Kalachakra. Two projected animations bring these drawings to life and complete the show. The story behind many of the documentary images was captured in Chas Curtis’ keen videograpy. Chas’ evocative timelapses and captivating clips from ceremony to circus were seamlessly edited into a luminous video interview by Kyle Ruddick. The video is a multi-media presentation of “Envisioning Ecstasy” and will be screened at the opening. The show is accompanied by a catalog, Envisioning Ecstasy and a clothbound book, 108 Visions : Ladakh During the Kalachakra, thoughtfully designed by Michael Motley, which offers glimpses of the journey from small details to sweeping vistas. Books and print sales benefit Tibet House US, which brings the concept of collaboration full circle.

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All of this work was greatly enhanced by John Paul and Seth’s dynamic duo Art of Processing and Art of Creativity. The workshops are an intense immersive experience for honing artistic vision, voice and direction. And of course any workshop with JP and Seth is a lesson in that all important art of playing well with others, one of my favorite photographic mantras. Photography is often seen as a solitary pursuit and though it has it’s quiet moments, communal creativity widens the collective perspective. This golden rule underpins the entire show of “Envisioning Ecstasy.”

“Envisioning Ecstasy” opens at Tibet House US, New York, May 20 from 6-8pm and is on exhibit until June 26. Two publications will be released for the show: a catalog, “Envisioning Ecstasy,” and a hardcover book, 108 Visions: Ladakh During the Kalachakra. Please contact Tibet House US regarding show information and books.

Learn more about Envisioning Ecstacy on The Leica Blog.

Find out more about Cira Crowell here.

Alumnus Olaf Willoughby – On Being Interviewed & Interviewing

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In June 2015, Olaf will be co-teaching ‘Visual Conversations’, a creative photography workshop with Eileen McCarney Muldoon at Maine Media College in Rockport. They will also be running a LightDance workshop in Brooklyn in Sep 2015.
Olaf Willoughby is a photographer, writer and researcher. He is co-founder of The Leica Meet, a Facebook page and website growing at warp speed to over 7,800 members. After conducting many interviews for the Leica Blog, Olaf was recently interviewed there too. Read his interview here.
Here, Olaf shares his thoughts on interviewing and being interviewed.
What Makes Photography Tock?
This was the question uppermost in my mind when I started interviewing photographers for The Leica Blog some time ago.
We’ve all worked on ideas which tick like a Swiss watch. They have a magic flow resonating with ourselves and others. But some don’t, they linger on that haunting to-do list and never quite get done. Why?
Photographers are often considered not to be the best judges of their own work, so asking a direct question was unlikely to be productive. I was wondering how to tackle this dilemma in my interviews when, luckily, I stumbled on this quote from Duane Michaels,
‘Photographers look too much. They have to start thinking and feeling and make that the source of their work. Don’t just look for curiosity’. (For more words of great wisdom check Sean Kernan’s interview with Duane Michaels here.)
I understood. It identified for me what I love about Michael Ackermann in ‘End Time City’and the shortcomings I see in my own work. Time and again I pressed the ‘thinking & feeling’button in my interviews and it always resulted in a deeper more engaging response.
So when the Leica Blog turned the tables and interviewed me on my ‘Leica in London’Street Photography project (link below) I felt well prepared. Yet initially I fell into the same trap. Rationality ruled. It was only when I let go of the left brain that I could articulate the bigger picture.
Seeing that I had sat on both sides of the interviewing table JP kindly suggested that I might like to share any learnings on his blog.
Working through the process from the questions, to pulling together the images and text and finally telling the story, here are three pointers emerging from my interviews which have helped me to show the work of others in the best light. I hope they work for you too.
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Question the questions
Let’s start at the beginning. The fact that I (or anybody else) am asking the questions doesn’t mean they are the right or the best questions for you. If you have thought through your project then you’ll know the one or two critical points you want to get across. Sense check the questions to see if they put the spotlight on these areas. If not, suggest changes or take advantage of the more generic questions to make your point. No apologies if this sounds ‘duh’, obvious. Apart from the big and experienced industry names, most photographers are honoured and excited to be interviewed. Often too excited to pinpoint how they think and feel about their project and whether the questions really search out the soul of their work.
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Alumnus Olaf Willoughby – Collaboration Workshop

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“Actors on a Stage”
It was a lightbulb moment. The ship chugged and crunched its way through pack ice. The excited babble of the photographers fell to an awestruck silence as we passed one of Antarctica’s most inspiring sights, an iceberg the size of an apartment block with a deep crystal blue interior. I was shooting from the prow. I turned to look back along the deck and saw about 50 photographers, all shooting from the port side. But one – John Paul Caponigro – had moved to the upper deck and was shooting wave crests on the opposite side of the boat. Why?
Later he explained his philosophy as, ‘actors on a stage’. These images weren’t to be seen singly. Rather they were part of a bigger narrative, characters in a story. Some might go on to become heroes, others were bit part players. For me, a lightbulb went on.
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From two to three dimensions. Suddenly I saw an extra dimension to my work in terms of series and stories. Just as individual words/notes have greater meaning together as a poem/song, so images can have more energy when seen as part of a project. I was possibly the last person on the planet to realise this but projects make us think more deeply about our work as iteration takes over from the endless snapping of new images. But why stop there? If a switch of mindset can have such a beneficial effect, what else could I do to stimulate my creativity and take the next step?
From three to four dimensions. Enter stage right; new technology. Collaboration is something we take for granted. As humans we have a basic need to collaborate. We do it every day with partners, friends and colleagues. More recently it has become a buzzword in social media as technology compresses time and distance to give us the tools to collaborate artistically. Think Adobe Creative Cloud, Asana, G+, Dropbox …etc. Now it is coming of age in photography.
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Enter stage left; Eileen McCarney Muldoon, a fine art and travel photographer and educator based in Rhode Island, USA. Since meeting in Tibet two years ago, Eileen and I have collaborated on a variety of projects. We’ve explored multiple exposures, visual rhymes, incorporating words and working in film and digital. Along the way we made a simple but startling discovery–that despite collaboration being so unusual in photography, it produces dramatic results.
And the benefits aren’t just temporary. When that extra dimension transferred back into our solo work, we realised that we had stumbled on something important, which had enabled us to grow artistically. If it worked so well for us –why shouldn’t it work for others?
The inspiration generated by collaboration will lead you to pictures that will astonish you…and your friends. We have developed a range of tools and techniques to guide you through the collaborative process. You can learn more by checking out ‘Visual Conversations’, a workshop I’m co-teaching with Eileen McCarney Muldoon at Maine Media College, starting June 21st 2015.
Find out about the Visual Conversations Workshop here.
Find more Alumni Success Stories here.

Alumnus Sam Krisch – The Creative Curator

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Image courtesy of Taubman Museum

This is a guest post by Sam Krisch, a John Paul Caponigro Next Step Alumnus who lives and works in Roanoke, Virginia. He has curated an exhibition entitled Paul Caponigro and John Paul Caponigro: Generations which will be showing at the Taubman Museum of Art through March 28, 2015. An exhibition of his work Sam Krisch: Elements will open at Virginia Tech’s Center for the Arts on December 5, 2014.

About 18 months ago I was asked to join the staff of the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia as an adjunct curator of photography. The position was part-time and my job was to act as a proposer and organizer of exhibitions and to meet with others in the curatorial staff to discuss and plan our future programs. The Taubman Museum opened in 2008 and was a successor to several art museums in Roanoke, a small railroad heritage city in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The facility consists of nine galleries, an exploratory gallery for children, a theatre and an auditorium. It shows all kinds of art including painting, sculpture, ceramics, decorative arts, film, folk art and photography. In recent years it has exhibited works by Dorothea Lange, Edward Burtynsky, Alan Cohen, Civil Rights Photographers of the 1960s, Roanoke Times Photojournalists and several local photographic artists. The notes for one of its current exhibitions “Beg, Borrow and Steal” states that photography “plays a significant role in much of the work, which is represented in the exhibition by artists John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, Richard Prince, David Salle, and Cindy Sherman; all of whom are using manipulated photographic images to create dense collages or appropriating stereotypical portraits in humorous ways.”
It has been a valuable experience. I have learned that curating is a basic skill that all artists need to use in evaluating their work. We need to examine our artistic influences, create collections and bodies of work, see their evolution over time. Peer review also is vital in artistic growth and again is another data point in the personal curating process. Professional curating is an extension of this skill.
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The Speed Curators
For the past several years I have taught workshops in digital creativity. We use mobile phones as a basis for this practice, but we always start with an exercise in “speed curating.”This is valuable because people start to learn the elements that attract their eye and verbalize those aspects. Recently, I have had the pleasure of participating in leading continuing education programs for art teachers at the Taubman Museum. Some of it has been adapted from my mobile photography courses, but the speed curating exercise is a vital part of the day.
The exercise begins with about 200 5”x 5”of my iPhone prints spread out on tables in the library. I tell the group “I am setting a timer for 6 minutes. During this time you can look BUT YOU MAY NOT touch the images. Don’t touch. Your assignment will be to choose between 6-8 images that work together and that you will present as if you are a gallery or museum curator. After that you will have 6 minutes to collect your images and then we will take them in the next room.”
It is always interesting to see the personalities at play. Some aggressively grab images and others hang back only to be disappointed that some of their favorites have already been taken. They have to either rethink their collections or find similar images. This mimics a curator’s dilemma of sometimes not being able to get all the works he or she wants and having to substitute work.

In the board room we talk about why we have chosen our images. The art teachers are used to talking about their own work as well as the work of their students. Each has a different idea and a different style. Some strictly look for artistic elements such as composition, contrast, color and form. Others use the images to tell a personal story or struggle that they are working through. Some even use song lyrics or musical references. All bring their own creative views to the collections. The act of rejecting and culling is as valuable as the act of inclusion. The same is true whether curating personal work, a personal collection of other artists, or for an institution.

Campbell Gunn, a fellow alumnus of John Paul Caponigro’s workshops, has created a portable collection of curated work. He finds photographers that he admires and organizes them in a collection on his iPad. Campbell says: “I simply create a dropbox master folder with subfolders for each photographer I am interested in and then as I find images that I think are instructive for my own visual reference library I copy them across. Then I have a Lightroom catalog that I use as a database which then syncs with an iPad app called PhotoMgrPro. The theme is developing ‘visual literacy’ or a ‘pattern language’. As with all languages, if you have a basic vocabulary and understand grammar, you can combine words or phrases to create new sentences (or in this case images) – without falling into the trap of being derivative or repetitive. It helps you find your own voice by understanding what it is in others voices that resonates most.”It is important to note that you should only copy low res images for this collection, keep them for your private use, and don’t copy images from books. Copying images from books is against the law in some countries.
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From “Two Generations” to “Generations”
When I started curating I had a number of ideas for photography exhibitions and busily contacted artists and curators from other institutions to attempt to work up presentations for our curating committee. My projects were competing with space and scheduling of other exhibitions in other media. The Taubman Museum keeps variety and balance in its programming and even within each medium is careful not to overdo one type of painting or one type of photography. For example, a fine documentary photography exhibition that may of been available to us was discouraged by the committee because of recent documentary exhibitions. The committee was interested in the Paul Caponigro and John Paul Caponigro exhibition that had shown several times in other institutions and encouraged me to explore this work.
I was delighted because not only has the Caponigros’work strongly influenced my own, but John Paul is my mentor and friend and there was a comfort level that was valuable in planning this exhibition. The Caponigros were very gracious in making their personal collections available to us and sent us a list of the works that had been exhibited.
We found a slot in our gallery schedule that worked and it was one of our larger galleries. Our Deputy Director of Exhibitions and I walked into the gallery and realized that we could have a very sterile show. It is a large room with almost 200 feet of wall space and is an average of 40 feet wide. I saw a long row of father on one wall and a long row of son on the other. The room would have very little flow, very little interest. We needed more work, we needed a better design.

With help from the artists and our Exhibitions staff we came up for a design for the gallery that included temporary interior walls to add interest and variety to the presentation. The walls allow for a dialogue between the two artists. Some of the interior walls have images by father and son that are related, others have a single artist in direct contrast with the other.
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I am a fan of John Paul’s book Process and he had prepared some of the images in that book to form a framed presentation that was ready to display. We thought that it would be very useful for educators to have JP’s thoughts and illustrations on his show in its own separate section. Although the images were set, it became a challenge to provide text within our guidelines for display. Our solution was to take quotes from the book—under fifty words a piece—and let the images and text guide the viewer through that part of the exhibition.
With the addition of the Process materials we had a show that embraced both the artists and the artistic process, the two generations of vision and work, and the generation of ideas. We also designed the exhibition in a way that would help slow people down during their walk through the gallery and stimulate discussion—perhaps even argument—about the merits of each artist’s work and their use of two of photography’s main technologies. It has become an illustration of photography’s history, the creative process, and for many their first exposure to two major artists.

Find out more about Sam Krisch here.
Find more Alumni Success Stories here.

Alumnus Andy Batt's New Book Camera & Craft

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Congratulations! Alumni Andy Batt’s new book Camera & Craft was voted one of the best photo books of 2014 by photo.net! (Yes. Many of my alumni are or become working pros.)

“An instructional photography book at heart, Camera & Craft is refreshingly conversational. It does dive into the nitty gritty of professional workflow, but it also throws working photographers from a variety of disciplines into the mix to share their stories and working preferences so that you can build the foundation to move your photographic work to the next level. Once you understand and harness the power of the technical tools at your disposal — combining your camera with your craft— you will become a better artist too.”

Here’s what Andy shared about his new book.

“As a way of going about this backwards, let me start with something that happened at the end. After a year of writing the book Camera & Craft, I went to Argentina with JP and Seth. This was a gift from my wife and business partner Therese. It was a perfect gift—it was an immersion in getting my head back together, and finding time for my own photography. It was an amazing time, and the work I created there is still influencing me and moving me forward. This much needed photographic adventure came right on the heels of delivering my final draft of Camera & Craft to my co-author Candace Dobro so she could do an amazing job of polishing my words and making sure that our book was readable and grammatically correct.

The book was a project that came directly from my teaching the online Digital Masters of Photography program for SVA. My experiences there gave me a good idea of an audience for this book: the inspired amateur and the dedicated student of photography. I wanted to craft a book that was conversational and technical, and meant to be read like a class, from front to back. To be blunt: these days anyone can take a good picture. Smart cameras, good automatic software, Instagram and iPhones—all of these enable anybody to call themselves a photographer. So what qualities drive the rest of us? What is it that distinguishes the professional and the fine art photographer from everyone else? One of the answers to that question—in my opinion—is mastery over the tools you use. Whether it’s cameras, lenses or software, I believe that understanding how they work leads to mastery, and mastery opens doors to creativity. My hope is that emerging photographers will learn to put their cameras on manual and take charge of their photography, and become better artists. ” – Andy Batt
Get the book here.
Find out more about Andy Batt here.
Connect with Andy on Facebook and Twitter.
Read more Alumni Success Stories here.

Alumnus David Reinfeld's New Exhibit Ideograms

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David Reinfeld’s new photography exhibit Ideograms opens Jan 29 and runs through Feb 15 at the Piermonts Fine Arts Gallery in Piermont, NY

David Reinfeld describes the work in his new exhibit.

“Intention, Randomness, and Meaning. This is the central theme of my upcoming exhibit Ideograms at the Piermont Fine Arts Gallery from Jan 29- Feb 15, 2015. It is a series of images about all and nothing, the source for finding meaning and inspiration in my life. This latest series of composite images traces back to my first attempt to make a composite photograph at JP’s workshop several years ago. His workshop was transformative for me- finally a way to express my imagination as jazz. I’ve made thousands of composites since that time and my thinking about the composite process has come full circle. Making a composite now feels the same as walking down the street taking traditional photographs. Looking back, I think the idea for Ideograms came to me when I was very young; I remember going to the movies just to see the credits. The photographs are very much a part of two aesthetic constructs- letters that intersect to create new shapes, and letters pasted on the abstract walls of our culture. The pictures are large, up to 30 x 40”, organized by the interactions of shape and color across the span of each wall area.

When I make Ideogram images, I look for shapes and colors to create new shapes and colors, sometimes all by themselves. At first, I felt it was important to use photographs of mine that stood strongly on their own. Now I am more receptive to using any image, looking for constructs hidden in plain sight. Somehow pictures seem talk to each other in this process regardless of how I intervene. My role seems to be as a guide with an ill formed idea.

I’ve always been intrigued by how letters and symbols create meaning, something from nothing, imagine that! It’s a curious endeavor, a bit obscure, but endlessly intriguing. It’s like seeing a print come out of the developer for the first time, each time.”

Alumnus Martyn Lucas' Exhibit Ends Of The Earth

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“Ends of the Earth is a dramatic, photographic voyage of the world’s ice caps and glaciers that depicts the magnificent beauty of the frozen landscape in large format color images.
Martyn Lucas grew up in England and was first introduced to photography by his father, a photographer who taught him composition, contrast, and how to perfectly capture a landscape. Lucas’ natural talent for landscape photography has led him all over the world, seeing and preserving each new place through the lens of a camera.
Inspired by the Polar Regions, Lucas has quite literally travelled to the Ends of the Earth to photograph the world’s ice caps and glaciers. These photographs, each breathtakingly beautiful, leave the viewer stunned as they are given the rare opportunity to see the vastness of Antarctica: the coldest, driest, and windiest place on Earth. Carefully photographing the urgency of global warming and the ice melting at alarming rates, Lucas has been able to present the unseen dilemmas of the world’s climate system.
Like viewing something out of a dream, this haunting exhibition promises to deliver the extreme beauty and silence of the frozen tundra, as seen through Martyn Lucas’ artistic vision. Each work complements the others when viewed as a whole, and yet each is a distinct work of art on its own.
The artwork of this incredible photographer is nothing short of captivating, revealing the massive size of the ice and the strong current and movement of the icy water. Viewers are welcome to come celebrate this incredible exhibition January 10, 2015 for the opening of Ends of the Earth, located in the Bunzl Gallery. Visitors of The Bascom also invited to Martyn Lucas’ Artist Talk and Reception Saturday, March 21, 2015 from 5 to 7 pm at The Bascom. Experience the wonder of Martyn Lucas’ Polar Regions photography through this breathtaking assemblage of photographs. ”
For more information, please contact The Bascom at 828.526.4949 or visit www.thebascom.org.
Find out more about this exhibit here.
Find out more about Martyn Lucas here.
Read more Alumni Success Stories here.