Kenro Izo lecture and book signing
Bhutan: Sacred Within
FITCHBURG ART MUSEUM

Sunday, March 21, 1 - 3 p.m.

Japanese born photographer, Kenro Izu will discuss his artistic process and travels in the little-known country, Bhutan.  Izu’s pictures, taken over a decade, depict Bhutan’s majestic mountains and valleys; monasteries, from which the country is governed and schooled; and portraits depicting across-section of the kingdom’s society including King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck (1999 graduate of Cushing Academy, Ashburnham, MA); Buddhist monksand novices, families and children.  Izu focuses on the Bhutan’s timelessquality of life that holds its own in the 21st-century world.

Free with Museum admission.

PRC Member Christian Waeber is fascinated by the passage of time and the permanence and simple beauty of medieval Churches. Seven years ago, he started a long term project aimed at photographically documenting Swiss Romanesque churches.

Waeber will be having an exhibition titled, Listening To These Walls at the French Library on Marlborough St in Boston from March 1-31, 2010.  An informal artist talk will be held on Saturday, March 13th at 3pm and a reception will be held on Thursday, March 25th.

For more information, visit: www.frenchlib.org

Our good friends over at the Panopticon Gallery of Photography at the Hotel Commonwealth will be co-sponsoring a benefit concert dubbed, Blues For Haiti in conjunction with Partners in Health and Eastern Standard on Thursday, March 25th from 7:30 - 10:30.

The concert will take place immediately after the opening reception for Sight of Sound, a group exhibition featuring work by Ryan Mastro, Ron Pownall, Charlie Sawyer, Frank Stewart, and Ernest C. Withers.  All proceeds from the concert and silent auction will help Partners in Health and their ongoing medical efforts in Haiti.  For more information, visit the (event page).

Wednesday, February 17, 6:30-7:30pm

“Twins When They Began to Take Modified Milk”
Part of the In-Sight: Looking Deeper and Differently Lecture Series
Arthur M. Sackler Museum Lecture Hall, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets $18 (members of Harvard Art Museum $12, students with valid ID $8, Harvard students free on a first-come, first-served basis).  Space is limited, and registration is strongly encouraged.

Michelle Lamunière, John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Assistant Curator of Photography, Harvard Art Museum/Fogg Museum

This compelling photograph of a mother and her twins is the basis for a larger discussion of Harvard’s Social Museum, a compilation of photographs and graphic material established in 1903 to collect the social experience of the world as material for university teaching. The image prompts an exploration of the early use of photography as a social document and its role in educating students about social problems and the solutions ­- such as the provision of pasteurized milk ­- developed to ameliorate them.

For more information, visit http://www.harvardartmuseum.org/calendar/detail.dot?id=25202. To register, call 617-495-0534.

Our friends over at Northeastern University will be hosting a lecture with photographers Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb on Wednesday, March 31, 2010.  Sponsored by the Department of Art & Design, the lecture will take place at 105 Shillman from 6:30 - 8pm.  This lecture is free and open to the public.

For more information, visit their website:  www.art.neu.edu

If you had fun at the book signing / Burlesque SHOW at the Coolidge a few weeks back, make sure you stop by the opening reception for Henry Horenstein: SHOW at Walker Contemporary this Friday, February 5th from 6-8pm.

Walker Contemporary is located at 450 Harrison Ave in the South End.

Henry Horenstein SHOW at Walker Contemporary

Alfred Buellesbach and Marcus Cowper

Battlescapes (Hardcover, 224 pages) Osprey Publishing

Battlescapes, a new publication by Osprey, is a collection of photographs and essays that survey concurrent landscapes that were once battlefields. Using a 6×17 format camera, Buellesbach photographed grounds with history that spans over two thousand years, from the battle of Alesia in 52 BC to Waterloo in 1815.  The thirty-four battlescapes surveyed are located in twelve European countries.

The basic, straightforward nature of these contemporary landscapes lend to the viewer’s impulse to imagine the horrors that once took place on these grounds. Time has caused the signs of previous battles to vanish; only man-made monuments or fortresses suggest the specifications. One is encouraged to conceptualize the location’s historical events. These beautiful, untouched landscapes were at one point blood stained and littered with bodies. The contrast of the present beauty with previous ugliness makes for an interesting allusion to the overall cycles of history.

Accompanying the panoramic photographs in Battlescapes are writings and other images of historical attractions and geological sites significant to each particular battle that informs the viewer of the details of the landscape’s preoccuring incidents. War is a significant component of a country’s history and identity, and Battlescapes brings further awareness to that. The photographs spark remembrance of the events and locations where these hostilities transpired.

As reviewed by PRC intern Tara Sellios

Are you interested in collecting photography, gallery hopping and wish the weather was nicer?  Then you should head out to Los Angeles next week and visit Photo LA.  The event has moved back to the Santa Monica Civic Center and will take place from Thursday, January 14th - 17th.  Look for the PRC portfolio advertisement in this year’s PhotoLA catalog!

For more information (click here)

Curtis Mann, currently featured in the Leopold Godowsky Jr Color Photography Awards at the PRC was just selected to take part in the prestigious 2010 Whitney Biennial.  Congrats Curtis!!!!!  A complete listing of the 2010 Whitney Biennial artist can be viewed here.

Curtis Mann, Photographer, Scratch (Beirut), from "Modifications"

Anthony Goicolea
Fictions (Hardcover, 188 pages) Twin Palms Publishers

Fictional stories are those that are created with illusion. The images and sequences imagined and invented by Goicolea challenge the viewer to proceed with trepidation when entering another world of uncertainty and ambiguity.

Goicolea’s Fictions by Twin Palms Publishers combines photographs with drawings from multiple different series. Following the subjects through the pages, the viewer witnesses another world filled of rituals and unspoken codes. Iconic and allegorical figures with symbolic imagery create these narratives in which the line between reality and fantasy is constantly being toyed with. Young boys all dressed in casual “uniforms” engage in mischief and appear to be outcasts of society. The meaning and purpose is never completely exposed, yet there is a constant sense of foreboding interwoven with the timeless places and recurring characters. With the publication’s dedication to “liars and storytellers everywhere,” the images read as a narrative interweaving fantasy and bewilderment.

Anthony Goicolea, Still Waters, 2006 from the monograph FICTIONS.

The complexities are further depicted by the androgynous subjects portrayed in the figurative drawings. Using Mylar and Plexiglas, Goicolea layers elements of the composition in transitional states. The doubling of ghostlike figures and the use of garish colors further blur the line between reality and fiction. The hybridization of ritualistic customs with dreamlike myths creates another world in which the viewer must proceed precariously as a hidden observer to resist engulfment.

As reviewed by PRC intern Laura Norris