This is always an exciting time of year on Comm. Ave. While the rest of Boston is quiet, there is a beehive of activity going on at the BU West T-stop!

We have given over our gallery to the imagemakers of tomorrow (PRC Summer Photo Camp is halfway through!) and right next door there are young graduate students about to blossom.

Boston Young Contemporaries, organized by BU studio art graduate students, takes over the former Cadillac Building from mid July - mid August. Now in its third year, you can see witness vibrant talent, juried from 12 regional graduate and post-bac programs. You can read the Boston Globe’s review right here, or stop on by yourself! It’s up until August 22nd.

This fall, over 200 vintage and contemporary photographs go up for auction to benefit the PRC. Above is one of the amazing images that the audience will be able to bid on. Keep checking back to see more auction images. Click here for more information on the event.

Image credit: Eric Almquist, Russell Orchards, Ipswich , Massachusetts, 2007/2008, Inkjet Print, 22 1/2×30 inches

In this feature, we showcase an image per week from our current exhibition, EXPOSURE: 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition, juried by Aperture’s Lesley A. Martin. In celebration of the last weeks of the show, we increased the frequency (and the excitement). This is the last image!

Today is the last day to see the PRC Juried show! We’re open today - Wednesday - from 10am - 6pm. (If you are out of town, browse our flicker set.)

This week’s image is from Ellen Susan and is a gorgeous wet plate image. Ellen has been getting a lot of attention as of late. Besides the multi-page spread in June’s PDN, American Photo’s excellent State of the Art blog has a very long post on her work. Congrats!

ABOUT : Ellen Susan (Savannah, GA) produces one-of-a-kind portraits of U.S. Army soldiers based in Southeast Georgia using the historical wet plate process. The majority of men and women in her “Soldier Portraits” have been deployed to Iraq two or three times since 2003. A graduate of MassArt and RISD, Susan has shown at the Houston Center for Photography; RISD|Works in Providence, RI; New Orleans Photo Alliance Gallery in New Orleans, LA; and has an upcoming solo show at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, OR this summer.

From Susan’s statement:

“Soldier Portraits” - The wet collodion process was the primary photographic method from the 1840s through the 1880s, encompassing the dates of the American Civil War. The men and women photographed for the Soldier Portraits project are members of the U.S. Army based in Southeast Georgia. Most have deployed to Iraq one to three times since 2003. Many are in Iraq now. Army deployments now last 15 months.

The necessarily long exposures of this slow process often result in an intensity of gaze, and the grainless, highly detailed surface brings out minute details of each individual. These attributes, combined with the historical military associations made me feel that the process could be a meaningful way to photograph contemporary soldiers and to provide a counterpoint to the anonymous representations seen in newspapers and on television. I wanted to produce physically enduring, visually arresting images of people who are being sent repeatedly into a war zone.

ABOVE IMAGE: Ellen Susan, SPC Shaun Kramer, 2007, from the series “Soldier Portraits,” Aluminotype, 10 x 8 inches, courtesy of the artist

In this feature, we showcase an image per week from our current exhibition, EXPOSURE: 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition, juried by Aperture’s Lesley A. Martin. In celebration of the last weeks of the show, we increased the frequency (and the excitement). This is the 2nd to last image!

You have 2 days to see the show - the last day is July 2nd! We’re open this week Tuesday and Wednesday 10am - 6pm. (If you are out of town, browse our flicker set.)

This week’s image is from Erik Shubert. Erik’s work, like the other Eric, is about work - and funny! Luckily, I haven’t had too many desk jobs, or these would hit even closer to home. I was thrilled that these two could meet at the opening reception.

ABOUT : Erik Schubert (Cambridge, MA), inspired in part by Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People and his businessman father, has been collecting and documenting scenes and ephemera of corporate aspirations and failure. A 2007 MFA graduate of MassArt, Schubert has shown in several juried student shows in Boston such as Boston Young Contemporaries and the 2007 PRC Student Exhibition. He has an upcoming solo show, Thinking Big, at the Slocumb Gallery at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, TN.

From Erik’s statement:

“How to Win Friends and Influence People” - Realizing that we live in an increasingly business-centered society, how we navigate as “businesspeople” may determine the success or failure of our aspirations and the ability to pursue them. I am interested in how this kind of society shapes our visual world and language.

At a young age it was instilled in me that the mythology from Dale Carnegie’s classic book, How to Win Friends and Influence People was one that predicated success and happiness in life. The book has been widely published and accepted by businesspeople and corporate planners all over the world, including my father.

Some images are documentations of found items, constructed on location. Other images are documentations of ephemera that I have collected from such places as expositions, infomercials, my family, and home. With these photographs, I try to explore and communicate metaphorically the success, failure, and complexity of corporate mythologies in society.

ABOVE IMAGE: Erik Schubert, Level II, 2007/2008, from the series “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” Archival Inkjet Print, 19 x 23 inches, courtesy of the artist

In this feature, we showcase an image per week from our current exhibition, EXPOSURE: 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition, juried by Aperture’s Lesley A. Martin. In celebration of the last few weeks of the show, we are going to increase the frequency (and the excitement) and share 2 per week - it’s a veritable photo frenzy!

Don’t miss it. The show’s last day is July 2nd! (If you are out of town, browse our flicker set.)

This week’s image is from Eric Percher. Eric’s work is colorful and graphically stunning - and funny! Luckily, I haven’t had too many desk jobs, or these would hit even closer to home. Eric recently participated in Review Santa Fe. You can see some of his work here.

ABOUT : Eric Percher (Brooklyn, NY) considers the limitations we accept in order to obtain success. His series “Work” is in part a semi-autobiographical response to his seven-year experience in the financial offices and cubicles of Midtown Manhattan. A fine art photographer living in New York City, he recently received a CENTER (Santa Fe) Singular Image Color Award, Honorable Mention.

From Percher’s statement:

Work considers the limitations we accept in order to obtain success: the constraints erected by the desires and fears that drive our initial ambitions; the stricture of further aspirations that becomes necessary to maintain the success we achieve; and the restrictions inherent to a life in an office-cube, within a numbered building, on a gridded city.

The series reveals moments of limitation, as demonstrated by subjects who are themselves the hard labor and emerging leaders of New York’s most profitable enterprises. The project does not intend to repudiate individual pursuits of success but to illuminate the tensions and sacrifices required to achieve such success. Consequently, the viewer is asked to consider the same question as the subject: is there sustenance in your hard work and satisfaction in its completion, or is this simply an economic transaction, dollars in exchange for hours, security swapped for autonomy? Or as the subjects might put it, does the return justify the investment?

ABOVE IMAGE: Eric Percher, Untitled, 2006/2008, from the series “Work,” Digital C-Print, 30 x 40 inches, courtesy of the artist

In this feature, we showcase an image per week from our current exhibition, EXPOSURE: 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition, juried by Aperture’s Lesley A. Martin. In celebration of the last few weeks of the show, we are going to increase the frequency (and the excitement) and share 2 per week - it’s a veritable photo frenzy!

Don’t miss it. The show’s last day is July 2nd! (If you are out of town, browse our flicker set.)

This week’s image is from Ben Lowy. Ben’s work has been generating a lot of buzz here. The suite of 4 images are an interesting and different look at the war in Iraq.

ABOUT : Benjamin Lowy (New York, NY) captures everyday scenes in Iraq as seen through the lens of his camera and the inches-thick, bulletproof window of an American Army Humvee. A self-represented assignment photographer with stock syndicated through the VII Network and clients ranging from The New York Times Magazine to Newsweek, Lowy was named one of PDN’s 30 emerging photographers to watch in 2004 and participated in the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass. Granted the Eddie Adams/Carl Mydans Award for War Photography, Lowy’s work has received awards from American Photography, Communication Arts, World Press Photo, and Pictures of the Year International, among others.

From Lowy’s statement:

I began this project as a response to what I felt was the general inability of people back home to comprehend what Iraq is like. Most people have never really seen or felt the effects of war. Confronted by a level of violence so high that walking on the streets to photograph is tantamount to suicidal behavior, I found myself confined to working with American soldiers, spending most of my time going on various missions while looking at the landscape of this broken country. My only view was through the inches-thick bulletproof window of an Army Humvee.

Metaphorically speaking, these windows represent a barrier that impedes dialogue. These pictures show a fragment of Iraqi life taken by a transient passenger in a Humvee. The images are not intimate - they often show a distant and detached perspective of a country so empty, so desolate and of a situation so dire.

ABOVE IMAGE:

Benjamin Lowy, A U.S. Army tank patrols in front of an often bombed Iraqi police station in Abu Ghraib as seen from a passing army Humvee patrol on July 11, 2007, 2007, from the series “Iraq: Perspectives,” Archival Inkjet Print, 11 ¾ x 16 ½ inches, courtesy of the artist and VII Network

In this new feature, we are showcasing an image per week from our current exhibition, the 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition. Molly Landreth is our 9th to date. Don’t forget, there is only 2 1/2 weeks left to see the show!

From Molly Landreth’s statement:
“Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America” - This series of photographs is an archive and a journey through a rapidly changing community and the lives of people who offer brave new visions of what it means to be queer in America today. To be visible is to become both empowered and vulnerable, even in a world where progressive attitudes are beginning to take hold. These images depict subjects who meet my gaze with a rare combination of forthright self-awareness and total abandon, as if standing in for something much larger than themselves.

ABOVE IMAGE: Molly Landreth, Lindsay and Tina, Mills College, Oakland, CA, 2005, 2005/2008, from the series “Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America,” Digital Pigment Print, 20 x 24 inches, courtesy of the artist

In this new feature, we are showcasing an image per week from our current exhibition, the 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition. Robert Knight’s is our 8th to date.

A couple of weeks ago, we concluded a 2 week run of the PRC on Flak Photo. This “web photo happening” spotlighted 10 images from the Juried Show. We’re still a “feature” on their home page, www.flakphoto.com.  Also be sure to check out Boston’s own Sage Sohier’s work as well. To see the show on the walls, check out our PRC Flickr page!

I have been a fan of Robert Knight’s work for some time now, so I was tickled when our juror Lesley A. Martin liked his work too.  I featured Robert’s work on Northeast Exposure Online (NEO) in May 2006 - right when he was graduating from MassArt.  Robert is one of our juried show alumni; he was also selected for last year’s exhibition as well by juror Jen Bekman (looks like he’ll also be a 20×200 soon!). This coming fall, he’ll have a show at Gallery Kayafas as well!  Congrats!

From Robert Knight’s statement:
In this subset of my larger “Dwelling” project, I explore the expectations which parents place on their children and which are reinforced by societal institutions, imagery, and traditions.  Through my photographs, I perceive a parent’s hopes and dreams about their child’s future physical image, intelligence, and success, as well as tensions that may exist between these aspirations and reality.  Collectively, I hope this project will make us conscious of children’s pressures and aware of the potential effects of the myriad images to which they are exposed.

ABOVE IMAGE: Robert Knight, Free and Hazel (Ages 12 & 8) #1, Roslindale, MA, 2006, 2006/2007, from the series “Dwelling: Caution - Children at Play,” Archival Inkjet Print, 31 x 39 inches, courtesy of Gallery Kayafas

In this new feature, we are showcasing an image per week from our current exhibition, the 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition. This is our 7th to date.

Last Friday concluded a 2 week run of the PRC on Flak Photo. This “web photo happening” spotlighted 10 images from the Juried Show. We’re still a “feature” on their home page, www.flakphoto.com, and in the gallery, so check it out. Thanks Andy!

If you are out of town, don’t worry, we posted lots of images of the installation and reception on our PRC Flickr page!

From Martine’s statement:
“Tête-à-Tête is a series of intimate portraits of my two adolescent sons and their friends, taken in our home in New York City as well as in the South of France. …Begun in the fall of 2005, the work explores adolescence as a liminal state-a time between childhood and adulthood, the feminine and the masculine, and innocence and a burgeoning self-consciousness.”

ABOVE IMAGE: Martine Fougeron, Nicolas and Adrien Dining, October 2005, from the series “Tête-à-Tête,” Digital C-Print, 15 ½ x 19 ½ inches, courtesy of the artist

In this new feature, we are showcasing an image per week from our upcoming 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition. This is our 6th to date, slightly delayed due to the holiday on Monday.

I first saw Talia Chetrit’s work in the juried graduate exhibition, Boston Young Contemporaries. I always love when artists address their own mediums. BYC 2008 will be coming soon to the 808 Gallery, right next door to the PRC, July 18th through August 2nd!

Talia’s work is different, it’s hard to put a finger on it. Enthralled, I showed her in our online series of emerging photographers, Northeast Exposure Online (or NEO for short). I was thrilled that our juror Lesley A. Martin liked her work too and selected it for this year’s show.

Here is a snippet from her artist statement:
“Photography records optical space. Light and time are its basic elements. I reduce my subject to these fundamental components to investigate the potential of photography’s inherent properties and how we perceive and categorize this medium. I examine the photographic process and experiment with perception-both the viewer’s and my own. How can the basic tools of light and space move us? How can we encounter them differently?…From white to black, Grayscale refers to the Zone System, a chart traditionally used when exposing negatives for a perfect tonal spectrum.”

And don’t forget - since this past Monday, the PRC has been teaming up with the kind folks at Flak Photo to feature 10 images from the Juried Show, a “web photo happening” if you will. The series continue today, and runs weekdays through the end of this week, May 26 - 30.

If you are out of town, don’t worry, we posted some images of the installation and reception (with more to come this week) on our PRC Flickr page!

ABOVE IMAGE: Talia Chetrit, Rainbow, 2007, Inkjet Print, 24 x 20 inches, courtesy of the artist

PRC Juried Show featured Online on FLAK PHOTO !

Our image a week takes a hiatus to defer to an image a day! Beginning this Monday, May 19th, the PRC has teamed up with the kind folks at Flak Photo to feature 10 images from the Juried Show, a “web photo happening” if you will. The series kicks off today, Monday, and runs weekdays, May 19 - 23 & May 26 - 30. Thank you Andy!!

Flak Photo / Features showcases images from “group show” photography projects - the section highlights work from new series, book projects and gallery exhibitions. In recent months, Flak Photo has published work from jen bekman gallery’s A New American Portrait, the Minnesota Center for Photography’s PhotoBravo, the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward / Emerging Photographers 2007, 3030 Press’ New Photography in China, Humble Arts Foundation’s 31 Under 31: Young Women in Art Photography and Hamburger Eyes Photo Magazine’s Inside Burgerworld.

Add to the above impressive list the 12th and 13th PRC Annual Juried Exhibitions, and we’re in some really good company!

ABOUT FLAK PHOTO: Flak Photo is a photography blogzine featuring distinctive work from an international community of contributors that promotes interesting visual approaches to seeing the world and celebrates the art of exhibiting quality photography online. The blog is produced by Andy Adams and features work from new photo essays, book projects and gallery exhibitions from established and emerging photographers.

So surf on in to www.flakphoto.com every day for the next couple of weeks, or sign up for their email list, and a great photo will be delivered daily to your inbox!

In this new feature, we are showcasing an image per week from our upcoming 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition. This is our 5th to date.

This is Lana Z Caplan’s 2nd juried show she’s gotten into since I’ve worked here. I have been a fan ever since Lana showed me work in my monthly portfolio reviews. I drooled over her tintypes at Gallery NAGA. Lana has been researching and photographing former sites of public executions in Europe, Asia, and the United States. Presented as sepia toned gelatin silver prints in French mats with text, the final presentation subverts visual and cultural expectations and practices.

Here is an example of the title for the above image: Site of Public Executions by Hanging from the Tyburn Tree Gallows, up to 25 people hanging at a time, averaging 35 hangings per year, 1571 – November 3, 1783, (Marble Arch, London)

Come to the PRC opening on Thursday, May 22nd from 5:30-7:30pm and see the real work! Or if you are out of town, don’t worry, we’ll be posting images of the installation and reception on our PRC Flickr page.

ABOVE IMAGE: Lana Z Caplan, 2007, Sepia Toned Gelatin Silver Print, 20 x 21 inches, courtesy of the artist and Gallery NAGA

In this new feature, we are featuring an image per week from our upcoming 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition. This is our 4th to date.

Cree Bruins is the the product of a Kodak family, just like myself. We have a lot in common as you can read in her statement below and in my blog post on growing up in Rochester, NY.

Come to the PRC opening on May 22nd and see the real work. Or if you are out of town, don’t worry, we’ll be posting images of the installation and reception on our PRC Flickr page.

ABOVE IMAGE: Cree Bruins, Lost and Found, 5B, 2006/2007 from the series “Leader Series,” Iris Print, 18 x 12 inches, courtesy of the Boston Drawing Project at Bernard Toale Gallery

“Leader Series - Lost and Found”

I was raised in Rochester, New York, the home of Eastman Kodak. My father worked for this well-known company for over 30 years. This early introduction to photography continues to exert its influence today in my art.

I use discarded end leaders from processed 35mm film that had been partially exposed to light during the loading process into the camera. These film parts are digitally captured, then converted to an Iris print. Each image merges the disappearing art form of film photography with the digital technology of today.

- Cree Bruins

In this new feature, we are featuring an image per week from our upcoming 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition. This is our 3rd to date.

Clint Baclawski will be showing two of these amazing lightbox constructions at the PRC. Clint was recently selected by Cate McQuaid in the Boston Globe as a local graduate student to watch. Check out the slideshow of “The Graduates” online at boston.com. His MFA thesis show opens at MassArt May 1st.

Come to the PRC opening on May 22nd and see the real work. Or if you are out of town, don’t worry, we’ll be posting images of the installation and reception on our PRC Flickr page.

ABOVE IMAGE: Clint Baclawski, Exhibition Hall A, 2008, constructed lightbox with back lit pigment prints, 42 x 52 x 12 inches, courtesy of the artist and artist in inventory @ the jen bekman gallery. www.clintb.com

In this new feature, we’ll be featuring an image per week from our upcoming 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition. We’re very excited here at the PRC to see it all come together. Come to the opening on May 22nd and see the real work!

ABOVE IMAGE: Claire Beckett, Private Dan Floyd at Basic Training, Fort Knox, KY, 2007, from the series “Simulating Iraq,” Digital C-Print, 29 ½ x 36 ½ inches, courtesy of the artist and the Bernard Toale Gallery