CLICK! in the Triangle

We in the Triangle are having our own festival of photography this October, titled CLICK!  

A full schedule of events is here. 

For those unfamiliar with North Carolina, the Triangle is of course the Research Triangle, bounded to the west by Chapel Hill, to the North by Durham, and to the east by Raleigh. witht e Research Triangle Park in the middle.

Major events for CLICK! -- in addition to the John Menapace and Elizabeth Matheson shows we discussed earlier, at the Gregg Museum here in Raleigh and at the Cameron Allen Gallery in Durham -- include special exhibitions at Chapel Hill's Ackland Museum, Raleigh's North Carolina Museum of Art, and Durham's Center for Documentary Studies. 

Together they provide an overview of photographic practice from its beginnings to the present, as well as an in-depth look at some of the many ways contemporary  photographers are going about their work. 

The show at the Ackland (the art museum of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is entitled Photovision: Selections from a Decade of Collecting, now up through January 4th, 2015.

The Ackland collects photographs that illustrate the history of photography as a practice from its beginnings to the present. 

The current show has on offer about 150 images that have been added to the Ackland's collection in the past ten years, organized into thematic groups, including "Photography and Multiplicity," "Sacred Spaces" (see image above), "Process and Product," and "Staging the Image."

The show at the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh is entitled Private Eye: Allen G. Thomas Jr. Photography Collection and features a large collection of contemporary photographs recently given to the museum by Allen Thomas. This show is up now through March 22nd, 2015.

Thomas, a resident of the small eastern North Carolina town of Wilson, has amassed over the past few years a major collection of contemporary photography. This represents his second major gift to the museum's collection.

For this gift to the NCMA, he has chosen a selection of work by the following shooters:

Jeff Bark, Matthew Baum, Jordi Bernadó, Jesse Burke, Anthony Goicolea, Bill Jacobson, Chris Jordan, Sze Tsung Leong (see image above), Chris McCaw, Ryan McGinley, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, Jack Pierson, Kerry Skarbakka, Alec Soth, and Shen Wei.

The NCMA describes the show as presenting "a range of photographic techniques and processes, from straightforward photography to highly manipulated, staged, and constructed images," including "expressive portraits, otherworldly landscapes, and abstractions of the natural world." 

The NCMA -- and the state of North Carolina -- are fortunate to have in Allen Thomas a patron who combines outstanding aesthetic sensibilities and a passion for photography with a generosity of spirit and a willingness to share his gifts with his fellow citizens. 

October brings two shows to Duke's Center for Documentary Studies in Durham. 

Up now through this weekend is a show entitled  Hard Art, DC 1979: Photographs by Lucian Perkins.

Perkins (see image above), a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning photographer, offers here a series of black and white images that document, according to the folks at CDS " the early days of a hardcore punk scene in the nation’s capital on the eve of the Reagan presidency, an enormously influential artistic and cultural movement inspired by then unknown bands like Bad Brains, the Teen Idles, and the Slickee Boys."

Opening October 27th and up through January 24, 2015 at CDS is a show of work entitled City under One Roof by Jen Kinney (see image above), winner in 2013 of the Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor Prize for documentary photography.

Kinney explores in this body of work “shared spaces" in Whittier, Alaska, a town she describes as an “unlikely crossroads of community and solitude, isolation and claustrophobia.” 

A community of just over 200 people, 90% of whom live in one 14-story building, Whittier is one of the most isolated communities in the USA.

Kinney documents in this work, as she puts it, "how the structures that people inhabit shape and order their lives; how, in turn, people construct, alter, and destroy spaces; and how these constant renovations to our physical world mirror changes in the stories that we tell ourselves, and how we structure our lives to these stories."

Much fine photography to see in the Research Triangle this October, and many thanks to the folks at CLICK! for organizing and coordinating it!