Obscura Gallery is thrilled to present our Fall solo exhibition by gallery artist Brigitte Carnochan and her new photographs inspired by the poems of Emily Dickinson. Brigitte Carnochan and Emily Dickinson share a passion for flowers that inspire both their mediums. Brigitte’s career has centered around the sensuality and beauty of botanicals and nudes, and in this new work, she circles back to her original subject matter of nearly four decades ago when she began by painting on her gelatin silver floral images with oil paints. Having been drawn increasingly over the years to the narrative possibilities in photographs, Carnochan incorporates in this series lines of poems in Dickinson’s own handwriting, inconspicuously or half hidden. The resulting images are printed with the 19th century platinum palladium photo process onto handmade Japanese gampi paper that she delicately backs with gold leaf, giving the images the look and feel of 19^th century daguerreotypes, with which Dickinson would have been familiar.

The exhibition is on view through November 9, 2019.

Download the full Press Release here.

AUGUST IN SANTA FE

Gallery Reception:
Saturday, August 10, 5-7pm

MANUELLO PAGANELLI, Ecuadorian Couple, 2000, 21×21”, edition of 40

For the month of August, we will be exhibiting a selection of our new gallery artist, Manuello Paganelli, and other newly acquired material during the Indian Markets taking place throughout Santa Fe. August brings antique and contemporary Indian Markets to our city and the town is bustling with exciting activities and exhibitions.

Paganelli’s photographs on exhibit this August are a selection from his new project photographing indigenous people across the Americas.

EDWARD CURTIS, A Hopi Girl, 1905, Photogravure on Holland van Gelder from Portfolio 12

Niki Boon, Jump, Summer, 2015

Obscura Gallery proudly presents our Summer exhibition with New Zealand photographer Niki Boon and her first solo exhibition in the United States debuting photographs which document her family’s rural, home-schooled life in Marlborough, New Zealand. While our U.S. Summertime is New Zealand’s Wintertime, we can bask in the imagery that Boon has taken during the warm months in New Zealand while the children pursue an alternative education and lifestyle in a natural environment on top of the East coast of the South island of New Zealand.

Niki Boon, Her Backyard, 2016

Boon’s photographic work was born from her intense desire to document her family’s lifestyle that the country environment has nurtured. A mother of four, Niki shares her family’s rural life with camera wizardry that utilizes motion, incredible perspective, and depth of field, as well as a style that bears influence from those of Jock Sturges and Sally Mann but exudes her own distinction using a wide-angle, sometimes close-up lens and ground-perspective imagery. Boon refers to her work as “turning your beautiful ordinary into art.” Drawn to black and white photography, Boon expertly controls the natural lighting of her environment, making use of shadows and the position of the sun to frame her children in whatever play they are found in that day.

Niki Boon, The Bath, 2016

Black and white enables me to see light differently. Rather than focusing on colors, I find I focus more on the direction and quality of light. I just find the interaction between light and shadow more interesting to focus on than color relationships.

Niki Boon, Ice Block, 2015

Click here to view more of Niki Boon’s work.

Click here to download the full Press Release.

 

Obscura Gallery presents Traversing East, an exhibition with Michael Berman and Neil Folberg, two contemporary photographers who both come from, participate in, and extend the tradition of Western landscape photography. Both artists now immerse themselves in Eastern landscapes to discover the unseen, and explore humanity’s relationship to nature both physically and spiritually. New Mexican Michael Berman’s ongoing project exposes the Mongolian Bogd Kahn Mountain landscape in its range of complex and diverse ecosystems. For the past three years, Michael has been photographing in the oldest government designated Protected Natural Area on Earth and has been detailing what is occurring to the landscape and wildlife amidst the ever-expanding surrounding community of Ulaanbaatar. American-Israeli photographer, Neil Folberg, who was originally born in California and moved to Jerusalem over 40 years ago, creates photographs which explore the relationship between man, nature, and the cosmos. The lucid landscapes of the Middle East share the range of topography found within the nearly untouched, serene terrain. The exhibition also includes his most recent series’, Taking Measure, and White Winds, where the artist includes himself in vast, pure landscapes of the Faroe Islands and Iceland in which he considers the ultimate limits of knowledge and vision.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE.

Click here to view Michael Berman’s work in the exhibition.

Click here to view Neil Folberg’s work in the exhibition.

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Obscura Gallery presents the solo exhibition, Retro-Active, with the New Orleans prolific duo Louviere+Vanessa, including past and current work from their various series over the last 15 years. Louviere+Vanessa’s style exudes a Southern Gothic pairing of transgression and beauty through mystery, dark humor, and the supernatural, often involving the figurative use of protagonists such as humans and animals alluding to literature and philosophy. The artists effectively combine the mediums and nuances of film, photography, painting, printmaking, and even music, resulting in mixed media works that use gold and silver leaf, resin, varnish, wax, charcoal, various other mediums, as well as ways of recording the visual through sound, and finishing many of the pieces with handmade frames.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE

Obscura Gallery presents our first in an ongoing exhibition series of The Artist as Collector, debuting the series with the photographic collection and personal works of the late Santa Fean, Paige Pinnell. Pinnell, who passed away in 2017, embodied the passion for photography by being a photography dealer, artist, educator, and collector. Paige’s deep knowledge of and connection to photography on a national level had influence on many in the local Santa Fe community in the 1960-70’s and was integral to what would become the development of the photography market in Santa Fe at that time. Obscura Gallery is honored to present this exhibition of works for sale to pay tribute to Pinnell’s photographic legacy.

The exhibition includes works by:
Paul Caponigro
Edward Curtis
LA Huffman
William Henry Jackson
Eadward Muybridge
Anne Noggle
Paige Pinnell
Douglas Prince
Henry Holmes Smith
George Tice
Jerry Uelsmann
Todd Walker
Todd Webb
Edward Weston
Ben Wittick
Myron Wood

Click here to view the images in the exhibition.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS HERE.

Obscura Gallery proudly presents a three-person photographic exhibition, Views of Stillness, with Michael Massaia, Yamamoto Masao, and Kate Joyce. The exhibition features three photographers who each portray a sense of balance and harmony in their work that results in tranquility to their imagery. Michael Massaia and Yamamoto Masao both search for scenes absent of crowds which creates a solitary intimacy and reflection within their imagery. Michael Massaia, from New Jersey, seeks the dichotomy of landscapes in urban areas that are void of people within the quiet hours of late night and early morning. Yamamoto Masao from Japan, practices the art of “Shizuka” or “breathing quietly in nature,” in order to capture the ‘presence of treasures’ that he seeks with his camera. Santa Fean Kate Joyce’s work, ‘Ten-Diptychs’ was inspired by the digital loss of a photographic series that, when once restored, formed accidental imagery that allowed her to overcome and pacify her expectations, resulting in a harmonious balance of self and image.

The exhibition opens with a reception on Friday, November 16, 2018 from 5-7pm at Obscura Gallery, 1405 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, New Mexico. The exhibition is on view through January 5, 2019.

VIEW YAMAMOTO MASAO WORKS

YAMAMOTO MASAO, #67, A box of Ku, 1997, mixed media and gelatin silver print, edition of 40

VIEW MICHAEL MASSAIA WORKS

MICHAEL MASSAIA, Central Park, Private Gardens, 2013, 22×28″, gelatin silver print, edition of 20

VIEW KATE JOYCE WORKS

KATE JOYCE, Right Thumb & T5594x3678-02064.tif, 2007, 5 X 6.75″, archival pigment ink print, Unique.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE.

Entrance Gallery with Michael Massaia Central Park large format gelatin prints.

Front Gallery with Kate Joyce and Masao Yamamoto

Center Gallery with Michael Massaia and Kate Joyce

Viewing gallery with Michael Massaia and Yamamoto Masao.

Side gallery with Michael Massaia.

This solo exhibition includes over 50 exquisite gelatin silver prints hand printed by the artist. The exhibition is a fifteen year photographic study not only of Monument Valley itself but it also demonstrates the artist’s unique eye for patience in the art of seeing.

KURT MARKUS, Monument Valley, 2011, 20×25″, archival pigment ink print, edition of 25.

Monument Valley is located at the four corners region spanning Utah and Arizona on the Navajo Nation Reservation. Tse’Bii’Ndzisgaii, the Navajo name for Monument Valley meaning ‘clearing among the rock’, spans five square miles with fragile pinnacles of rock of sandstone that tower up to 1,000 feet. For hundreds of years, the Navajo have raised livestock and farmed small quantities of crops in the valley. Not just a place of habitation and livelihood, Monument Valley has significant meaning to the many Navajo who took refuge in the valley when forced out of Canyon De Chelly by the U.S. Army during the “Long Walk.” An 1868 treaty allowed their return to their ancestral homeland and established the Navajo Reservation. Other parts of Monument Valley have been added to the Navajo Reservation over time. Monument Valley became popular with Hollywood when John Ford’s first of many movies, Stagecoach, was shot there in 1938, starring John Wayne, and making him a star, as well as putting Westerns in a respected film genre.

Monument Valley is the one place that will always be there for me. No matter the comings and goings of the world’s players, Monument Valley persists, in its own and uniquely quirkiness, delighting me, renewing me, challenging me, simply carving out pieces of my heart, for safe keeping. Thank you, Navajo Nation, for making Monument Valley what it is, without pretense or visible intent to modernize your sacred land. May that Wild West rocky road that drops down into the valley serve as the gateway to something more spiritual, a descent into another time.
– Kurt Markus, 2017

VIEW THE ONLINE EXHIBITION HERE

Download the Kurt Markus – Obscura Gallery Press Release here.