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Indepth Arts News:
"Starlight: David Stephenson Photographs"
2001-08-04 until 2001-10-10
Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland, OH,
USA
A new exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) will feature 11 large-scale
color and black-and-white prints by internationally recognized photographer David Stephenson. For
this series, Stephenson pointed his camera upward at the night sky and photographed the tracery of
starlight, revealing remarkable colors and tones.
Tom Hinson, CMA s curator of photography, notes: These images offer thought-provoking
insights regarding our place in the world. The vast spaces that he photographs, filled with color and
movement, remind us that humans are only a tiny part of a huge and complex universe, and yet we are
inextricably connected to it.
Stephenson achieves his large color prints (40 x 40 inches) and gelatin silver prints (19 x 19
inches) using a variety of technical approaches, including lengthy, multiple exposures. Stephenson
explores what he calls sacred spaces in nature as well as the passage of time - many of the stars have
died by the time their light reaches us. Images such as 1011 (1995), a black-and-white photograph, evoke
a meteor shower or a minimalist drawing, while 1902 (1996) suggests a colorful pinwheel of epic
proportions.
Stephenson was born in 1955 in Washington, D.C. His photographs are in many collections,
including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris. Widely exhibited and published, his work has been featured in more than 130 solo and
group exhibitions in America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. Currently a resident of Australia, he directs
the photography program at the University of Tasmania School of Art.
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