Photography in Black and White

Three Visions

Dirk Bakker

Nina Hauser

Terry Abrams

Fourth Elegy
Flowering and Fading Come to Us Both at Once
3/30
photograph
black and white pigment ink on paper
image size 22"h x 14.5"w
framed 30"h x 26"w
by Dirk Bakker

March 29 - May 8, 2011

Opening Reception:

Friday, April 1, 7-10 pm

Also showing are the following visiting artists:

Martha Rock Keller, Judith Jacobs, Susan Crawley, Maria Ruggiero, Matruka Sherman, Sarah Stanton, Fran Wolok, and Barbara Yerace

This exhibit, Photography in Black and White, Three Visions, features the work of three talented professional photographers, Dirk Bakker, formerly Director of Photography at the Detroit Institute of Art; WSG Gallery member artist, Nina Hauser, and Terry Abrams, full-time faculty member at Washtenaw Community College.

Nina Hauser:
Curator of this show, Nina Hauser, can trace her love of black and white imagery to the appreciation, at a young age, of the elegance and beauty of the formal black and white photographic portraits of her parents’ wedding. When she bought her first 35mm camera, it was with the intention of learning portraiture and how to work in a darkroom. She started with classes at the School of Visual Arts in NYC in the 1960s and continues her exploration of fine art photography to this day. For her, black and white images, without the distraction of color, are dramatic, architectural, and elegant.
After giving away her darkroom equipment several years ago, she has dedicated her time to the challenge of using digital cameras to capture black and white images and printing them as she was able to do so comfortably when working with film.  
Her photography, of late, has been very much about the land and nature she combines with her love of travel. Her images presented in this show, a few shot with an infrared camera,  will feature landscapes and architectural images.
  
Terry Abrams:
Like many photographers, Terry’s interest in photography began by working with black and white film and making darkroom prints. For over 25 years, he refined his skills in the darkroom while keeping an eye on innovations in digital imaging.
The photographs in this exhibit show his interest in simple, atmospheric compositions. Working in black and white permits him to bypass the emotional aspects of color and concentrate on tonal values to produce an emotional quality of light instead. These images represent some of his most recent expressions in black and white.

Dirk Bakker:
For much of his professional career Dirk has specialized in the photography of art object and architecture. Since the early 1990’s, Dirk has devoted his time to a project (Pak'al Tunich/Stone Gardens) that seeks to record all known Mayan architectural sites in Mexico and Central America. The resulting panoramas range in size from 6 to 10 feet and are each made up of hundreds of individual photographs.
His personal art photography has centered on performance art and metaphysical imagery.  It includes collaborations with Chicago performance artist Sandra Binion, which can be seen here in a photograph of reflections on "The Duino Elegies" by Rainer Maria Rilke"
In recent works from Latin America, titled "Passing" and "Theodice Denied" the underlying theme of transient evil, brought the need for a more historic form of the photographic medium, the absence of color.

Perpetual Mountains, Death Valley
pigment ink photograph
30"h x 40"w
by Terry Abrams

Kingdom of Sand
1/5
pigment ink photograph
8"h x 12"w
by Nina Hauser

No Expectations
1/5
pigment ink photograph
8"h x 12"w
by Nina Hauser