The Center for Photography  at Woodstock (CPW) is pleased to announce PhotographyNow 2011 curated by Vince Aletti, photography curator, writer, and critic for The New Yorker and Photograph.  This year's installment of the annual Photography Now exhibition presents 10 artists who share a set of multidisciplinary tools, an aptitude for working across mediums, and a curiosity about the changing nature of photography itself. Their work collectively speaks to the intersections of photography, drawing, painting, and printmaking, while investigating a range of fresh interpretations on traditional portraiture and the science and poetry found in nature.  

2011 curator Vince Aletti notes what drew him to this year's image makers: "At a time when digitally captured and enhanced photographs can achieve new levels of flawlessness, I find myself increasingly drawn to handmade, inherently flawed images."  

Bradly Dever Treadaway (Brooklyn, NY), Rita Barros (New York, NY) and Matthew Dols (Huron, OH) each work with multiple images in grids, layers, and alternating contexts to generate elusive portraits by emphasizing atmosphere and the surrounding environment.

In combining photographs with encaustics, a wax-based medium, Christa Kreeger Bowden(Lexington, VA) and Robin Dru Germany (Salton, TX) study plant life and bodies of water, respectively, attending to the sensual textures and poetry in these microcosms. With the portfolio Math and Nature, the collaborative team of Mariah Doren (Brooklyn, NY) & Johanna Paas (Mount Pleasant, MI) use inkjet prints, Van Dyke Brown printing process, relief, collage, silkscreen, and more to create works which explore the tension between order that is innate and that which is imposed.  

The work of Chad Kleitsch (Red Hook, NY) and Anne Arden McDonald (Brooklyn, NY) takes as subject and medium the sublime qualities of light itself - with Kleitsch, by using Photoshop to reference everything from classic depictions of carved suns on Egyptian temples to spectra reminiscent of films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and with McDonald, by creating unique, life sized photograms of the body to express the innermostfunctions of this mysterious and fraught site.  

Finally, adding an observational standpoint to the exhibition is the work of both Mikhail Gubin (Kew Gardens, NY) and Yo Imae (Elmhurst, NY), whose images reveal the shadow of humanity apparent when photographing life on the street.     

The opening reception for Photography Now 2011 will be held on Saturday, April 9th from 5-7pm.

To learn more about the exhibition, Photography Now 2011, please click here.

Image credits (top to bottom):
© Chad Kleitsch, Lights #05, from the series Lights, 2010  © Christa Kreeger Bowden, Nest I, from the series Roots & Nests, 2009  © Yo Imae, Untitled (March 2008), from the series Subtle Perception, 2008. 

This exhibition is made possible in part the generous support of private and public lenders, our hospitality sponsor, the Holiday Inn in Kingston, and with funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. 

  

Founded in 1977, the Center for Photography at Woodstock is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 artist-centered organization dedicated to supporting artists working in photography and related media and engaging audiences through opportunities in which creation, discovery, and education are made possible.

To learn more visit www.cpw.org.