Show Announcement, Salt Lake City, UT

[Robert Hall]

​

Images of the West:​

A Contemporary View of ​

People and Places​

Whitmore Gallery​

April 18-June 4, 2005​

​

Featuring:​

Robert Hall, West Jordan, UT​

Lee Carmichael, Fort Worth, TX​

Mateo Morgan, Salinas, CA ​

Agnes Weessies, San Francisco, CA​

Show information









Whitmore Gallery

Whitmore Public Library
2197 East Fort Union Boulevard
Salt Lake City, UT 84121
(801) 944-7533
Mon.-Thurs. 10:00 a.m.-9:00 p.m.
Fri.-Sat. 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.
First and second floor galleries

Press contact:

Robert Hall
Robert Hall Photography
1493 W. Erickson Park Drive
West Jordan, UT 84084
(801) 673-4510

Photos available - Interviews available



​

Image used by permission. © 2005 Robert Hall, “Balanced Rock,” Platinum print




Images of the West: A Contemporary View of People and Places

Salt Lake City, UT




A photograph selects a portion of reality from a point of view. The artists’ choices—where to stand, when to open the shutter, how to process the image—anticipate the response of the audience. Even the most casual glance involves choices, interpretation, a movement of both the eye and the heart.



In its Utah premier, Images of the West: A Contemporary View of People and Places celebrates the history and diversity of the Western states through four distinctly different points of view. The forty black-and-white images demonstrate the tremendous variety of complexity and creativity of the different faucets of this area. Although many of the photographs may look documentary at first glance, the artists have created mysterious images that tell deeper stories and raise quiet questions about the people and scenes that appear.



Displayed in groups of ten, the exhibit ranges geographically from Southern Texas to Northern California. The subjects range from the solemn majesty of Utah’s landscapes to the grace and strength of colonizing architecture; from the ghosts of an agrarian time to the bewilderment of youth searching for a lost glamour. These artists use traditional photographic methods and handprint their images.



Lee Carmichael has selected ten images from his South Texas Missions series for this exhibit. There are five missions in the original chain; the Alamo is the north most and San Francisco de Espada is the southern most. Representing a tumultuous time of expansion and conversion, these images seem paused in contemplation and repose. Carmichael uses light and shadow to emphasize the architectural lines of the buildings and to create a sense of reverence and history within the quite places. The stark contrast of a whitewashed wall behind a religious icon reminds the viewer how very internal and personal our faith must be.



Even familiar landscapes seem new when viewed through different eyes. Robert Hall presents desert landscapes that remind the viewer of the amazing fortitude required to enter into these huge, wild spaces. His image of the northern end of the Great Salt Lake at the end of the drought is a study in irony: a hot, dry spot of forbidden water that creates a visceral thirst in the viewer. Hall develops his images in his West Jordan darkroom as platinum prints, an extraordinarily luminous technique often associated with turn-of-the-century photography.



Agnes Weessies demonstrates a keen ability to make the viewer interact with her work. The abandoned vehicles and farm equipment in her images seem surprised to find they have been put to pasture; Treed Thresher takes a second look, and then a third, as the images subtly unfolds its message about the power of nature over man. Weessies’ contemplative Northern California water images are an antithesis to Hall’s visions of the desert.



But while the West looks backward, it runs forward. Mateo Morgan focuses on the growing pains of a developing West coast that is constantly being reinvented, never resting on its past. His images of painfully awkward young adolescences—poised on the cusp of adulthood, but not sure how to proceed—echo our own political and environmental struggles. The gaze of a girl sitting on a curb in high heels and a cheap dress seems to ask what will happen next—to her, and to all of us.



This exhibit is showing in the Whitmore Library at 2197 East Fort Union Boulevard, Salt Lake City, 84121 from April 18 to June 4, 2005. Exhibit hours are Mon.-Thurs. 10:00 a.m.-9:00 p.m. and Fri.-Sat. 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. The public is invited; admission is free. Questions: contact Robert Hall

 

[Robert Hall]

About the artists

About the Artists


Lee Carmichael, Fort Worth, TX
Carmichael has been photographing for over 30 years. He started college wanting to be an architect, but soon changed his major to Art—and then discovered photography. He purchased his first serious camera in Germany thru the Air Force commissary. When he was discharged from the USAF, he enrolled in the Massachusetts College of Art and studied photography. Carmichael returned to Texas in 1974 and worked at a variety of photo jobs. In 1976, he began to work as a field tech for a major manufacturer in the graphic arts industry. He stayed there for 28 years, photographing sporadically.

Carmichael is now a dedicated photographer using large format cameras. He uses a Deardorff 5x7 Special with a 4x5 back and also an 8x10 camera. Carmichael does all his own darkroom work and handprints his images in silver.


Mateo Morgan, Salinas, CA
Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Morgan grew up mostly in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties in California. He started drawing people and things at a very young age and then moved his focus to photography. For about four years, he worked as a commercial photographer making images of agricultural produce, but gave it up in favor of a more creative use of his abilities. Morgan has illustrated covers for software manuals, taken commissions for portraits, participated in a group show at the Monterey Museum of Art, and operates big tractors in the construction field in order to pay for the rent and the endless supplies of materials used in the making of pretty pictures.

As for education, what little he has was in another field reading English at a university in England that he says he could not afford. Morgan’s skills in photography were picked up through years of work and by osmosis, since he lives in a part of the world blessed with countless master printers. His time is spent exploring unusual processes such as Uranium printing and unnamed ones that he is not sure if he invented himself.

Morgan currently lives in Salinas, California and enjoys surfing when the winds are favorable and work when it’s absolutely necessary.



Agnes Weessies, San Francisco, CA
An award winning multidiscipline artist, Weessies carries on a long family tradition of famous European artisan roots. She was born in Denmark but raised in the United States. Trained early in many aspects of fine art, she denied her creative side throughout adulthood until ten years ago. Following a serious illness, Weessies returned passionately to her art. Today, many of her needle arts, metal sculptures, jewelry, and photographs are in both public and private collections.

Currently, Weessies is augmenting her creative endeavors with a new project. She is organizing a group of photographers into a cohesive team to publish a new non-digital photographic magazine. Emulsion magazine will fill the void left by the digital tsunami that forgot there must be magic in the hands when creating a fine art photograph.


Robert Hall, West Jordan, UT
Robert Hall believes that we all sense beauty in a very personal way; our reactions to the outside world are governed by our internal sense of self. Therefore, it is the duty of an artist to create a sense of beauty that moves us out of our internal realm to appreciate what we might not have seen before.

Hall has been photographing for more than thirty years. He states that art “helps us see with new eyes what we knew was there but never really
recognized…I photograph not to record or document but rather, to capture and hold, just for a moment, the essence of something greater that exists within a scene.”

As did the well-known photographers Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, Hall uses large format cameras and then contact prints the negatives. Each of these images was created with a view camera, producing an 8x10 or 12x20 negative. These negatives are exceptionally sharp and contain detail greater than the unaided eye can perceive.

Hall prints his images by hand with platinum, palladium, silver, and gold, using archival procedures that may outlast even the landscapes they honor.

 

[Jeremy]

Wish I could be there--any chance of putting the exhibition photos online?

 

[photomc]

Ahhh Man!!! Wonder if I can figure out how to make a trip to UT? Congratulations to all 4 APUG members...could not imagine a better group, this show should be great.

Now I feel like passing out cigars...feel like a proud Papa...Great news guys..and yeah Jeremy..wouldn't a online exhibit be great...you guys need to take the show on the road and bring it hear.

Congratulations Again..one and all

 

[Robert Hall]

I will try to have some images of the gallery online this weekend.