VER VE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

 

Opening Reception and Book Signing: Friday, May 17, 2013, 5-7 pm

Exhibition is on view through Saturday, June 22, 2013

VERVE Gallery of Photography is pleased to present an exhibition with VERVE gallery artists Maggie Taylor and Henrieke Strecker. The public reception and book signing for Maggie Taylor’s recent retrospective publication, No Ordinary Days, will be held on Friday, May 17, 2013 from 5-7pm. The exhibition is on view through Saturday, June 22, 2013. Maggie Taylor will be present for the opening and book signing. HENRIEKE STRECKER Henrieke I. Strecker has her roots in the Black Forest of southwestern Germany. Her formative and creative years were spent there, and later in Berlin and Frankfurt. In 2008 she relocated to the United States and currently resides and works in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. She has spent her lifetime in photography and alternative photographic techniques. Henrieke’s work appears in photographic journals, catalogues, blogs and in books on photographic practices. She teaches The Art of Photography (analog photography) & Historic Photographic Processes at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire.

Henrieke Strecker, Untitled, 2007, 4.25 x 6”, Photogravure, Edition of 20

Henrieke Strecker’s photogravures and mixed media images rarely have titles. It is her goal to entice the viewer to become an active observer, to respond to the image so as to find his or her own meaning---presumably a new and very personal tale. Thus, she doesn’t document an isolated moment as a documentary photographer would nor does she paint a realistic picture, for Henrieke, this type of photographic rendition is too much like a report. Instead, she gives an account of small movements and atmospheres thereby sharing her experience with the viewer. Her technique requires her to remain still, in her own yard, in one place, and quietly allow her perceptions to emerge----“to go deeper—unearthing, layer after layer, exposing the fields of vision hidden well beneath the surface.” The core of her work is both visual and graphic, simplicity derived from her natural surroundings.

Henrieke Strecker, Untitled, 2011, 5.75 x 9.25”, Photogravure, Edition of 20

Henrieke’s woodcut-like images attend to the viewer’s curiosity. Just as her images go deeper and deeper to unearth one layer of meaning after another, so is the viewer captured by her pictorial design looking to find the message in her graphic composition. Some of her work is so deliberately ambiguous that one can see many interpretations of the work. Henrieke’s body of work Hommáge a Goya is a striking example of the art perfected.

Henrieke Strecker, Hommage à Goya, 2006, 6 x 4.25”, Photogravure, Edition of 20

Strecker makes her own Kozo paper for her etchings. Kozo is a hand made paper that adds texture to photo etchings. Utilizing her hand made pinhole cameras with long exposures allows her to make hauntingly rich portraits. In addition, the Henrieke uses Chine-collé, which is a special printmaking technique that allows her to use very delicate paper or linen that allows for finer detail to be pulled off the coated copper plate. In addition, the process also provides a background color behind the image that is different from the surrounding matte backboard. The finer detailed image on paper or linen is then transferred or bonded to another surface, a heavier support not unlike a matte, to which the finer paper or linen is attached.

Henrieke Strecker, Coming to America, 2008, 7 x 9.25”, Photogravure, Edition of 20

Her training includes screen-printing, old photographic techniques, pinhole photography, photograms, and Camerae Obscurae. She teaches workshops in Cyanotype, solar plate etching, traces of light photograms, zone plate photography, printmaking and poetry, bookmaking, painting, digital negatives, photography and video.

Henrieke Strecker, The Pilgrim (Der Pilger), 2006 4.25 x 5.75”, Photogravure, Edition of 20

MAGGIE TAYLOR Maggie Taylor’s exhibition is a selection of images from No Ordinary Days, a recent publication that is a survey of Taylor’s work from 1998 until 2012. Maggie continues her characteristic style of scanning and enhancing daguerreotypes, tintypes, figurines, illustrations and photographs for which she then creates surrealistic settings for the featured portrait.

Maggie Taylor, The moth house. 2012, 22 x 22”, Archival pigment ink print, Edition of 10

The portraits that Maggie uses for her photomontages, the daguerreotypes and the tintypes, are 19th Century pictures. The technical limitations of the medium at the time, the “film” that captured the subject of the photographs, was slow, not very light sensitive. Often the taking of a picture took several seconds, even minutes. While the lens cap was removed from the camera the photographic subjects were required to sit or stand, perfectly motionless, until the lens cap was replaced on the camera. Photographers used specially made props such as the Brady Stand, a 19th century factory made cast iron side table to act as a prop and to assist the subject to be still. Photographers also learned that a smile was always in motion. Pictures of those who smiled rendered the face blurred and the photo was useless. Hence, the portrait subject was admonished not to move, not to smile, not to blink, and, most importantly, not to change their expression. The subjects dressed for this special occasion presenting themselves for the camera in their best, probably their only formal wear. The clothing was dark, often black, creating a setting that had a funereal air or suggesting the subject was suffering some anguish or discomfort. If the photograph was taken in a studio there would be props, such as a table, sofas, stools, and chair, and perhaps a backdrop, a pastoral setting of trees or the like as the hand painted backdrops found on a stage. Rarely does anyone know the name of the person who was

photographed. That identity has long been lost to posterity. Finally, the print made of the subject was totally without color, ashen----just shades of gray. Consequently, these 19th Century portraits took on a stilted stoic and stiff expression, and worst of all, they were gray. No one ever looked happy; they couldn’t smile. In her book, Maggie Taylor’s Landscape of Dreams, Maggie shows us four examples of original daguerreotypes and tintypes as she collected them and then how she reconstructs them as her own art.

Maggie Taylor, Woman who loves fish. 2003, 15 x 15”, Archival pigment ink print, Edition of 15

These early daguerreotypes and tintypes are the very essence of Maggie Taylor’s surrealistic photomontages. This is where Maggie begins her magic, her artistic eye. First, she removes dust spots and irregularities and renders the image in a square format. Next, the subject gets a makeover, anything from a new head to longer hair to a new costume. Taylor gives color to skin and clothing adding, adjusting color to meet her vision of her final print. She then incorporates additional image fragments from these same old pictures. Maggie is always careful to place shadows opposite the light source in her images. Using multiple scans, layers in Photoshop, one superimposed on another, Maggie adds grass, flowers, water, animals, insects, skies, structures, a necklace, an Irish bog, clouds, tools, utensils, fruit, a floor, hands, streets, stars, fish, ships, butterflies, moon---- the list only limited by Maggie’s imagination. Each addition is incorporated into the original portrait and carefully adjusted so as to create the surrealistic venue for her character portraits. But Taylor is too subtle an artist to use these objects as anything more than clues. Taylor describes them as: “obviously symbolic but not symbolically obvious.”

Maggie Taylor, The lesson. 2012, 15 x 15”, Archival pigment ink print, Edition of 15

What strikes one at first blush is the lushness of her prints, the richness in their saturated color. Then one focuses on the expressions on the characters’ faces----these postured subjects, longsuffering victims of the limitations of 19th Century photography. The viewer is haunted by the many clues Maggie adds to the portraits hinting at some buried narrative. Maggie’s genius lies in the threads she weaves in her portraits that tug at our half remembered childhood experiences and impressions---fear of the dark, being out of place, lost expectations, sibling rivalries, lost pets and toys, ill fated birthday party, and bad dreams.

Maggie Taylor, Moth dancer. 2004, 15 x 15”, Archival pigment ink print, Edition of 15

Maggie Taylor was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She was awarded her BA degree in Philosophy from Yale University. Her MFA degree in Photography came from the University of Florida. After more than ten years as a still-life photographer, in 1996 she began to use the scanner and computer to create her digital photomontage images. Her work is featured in Adobe Photoshop Master Class: Maggie Taylor’s Landscape of Dreams, published by Peach Pit Press, Berkley in 2005; and Solutions Beginning with A, Modernbook Editions, Palo Alto, 2007; Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland published by Modernbook Editions, Palo Alto, 2008; and, Album, published by Edizioni Siz, Verona, Italy in 2009. Maggie’s most recent book is No Ordinary Days, published by the University of Florida Press in 2013.

Maggie Taylor, ?, 2012, 15 x 15”, Archival pigment ink print, Edition of 15

Maggie Taylor’s images have been widely exhibited and have been collected my many museums including the following: The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; The George Eastman House, Rochester; the Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville; the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin; The High Museum, Atlanta; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans; The Art Museum, Princeton University; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Santa Barbara. Maggie Taylor lives with her husband, Jerry Uelsmann in Gainesville, Florida.

HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR MAGGIE TAYLOR Email: jermag@earthlink.net

Phone: 352-338-7462

CONTACT INFORMATION OF HENRIEKE STRECKER Email: info@henriekestrecker.com

Phone: 603-630-0653

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY Jennifer Schlesinger Hanson, Director

219 E. Marcy Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501 Email: director@VERVEgallery.com

Phone: 505-982-5009 Fax: 505-982-9111