Untitled color image by Fred Dearnley.
FARMINGTON — The UMF Art Gallery presents, “Life and Times: Photographic Approaches to Nature Today,” an exhibit that looks at three artists’ poetic photographic approaches to the fragility, mutability and ephemerality of nature today. The exhibit will be on display through Sunday, Nov. 3, on the University of Maine at Farmington campus. The artists are Michel Droge, Allen Morris and Dean Randazzo.
Droge’s cyanotypes from her Audubon Project directly record the shadow impressions of native Maine plant species living at the Gilsland farm sanctuary. Her work is inspired by the 19th-century British botanist Anna Atkins. Cyanotypes rely upon the natural elements of sun and water to record an image and the process itself aligns with the transformational life cycle of plants.
Morris approaches landscapes cultivated by the hands of humans to control natural processes in the service of the endless driving needs and desires of society. His images capture places and objects of stability within a flowing temporal environment, questioning geographical and psychological understandings of place.
Randazzo uses photography and holography to explore the containment of time on a piece of glass or film, the relationship between loss and recovery, and the relationship between memory and photographic and filmic record. He uses images of the last individuals of extinct species and fleeting moments from the lives of insects to articulate the moments when experience transitions to memory.
A complementary exhibit, “New Work,” will be on display by colorist Fred Dearnley, who taught traditional photography at UMF for many years. In his new work, he fully embraces a digital approach to the documentation of nature. His closely processed images become intimate portraits and textural studies of plant subjects, despite their digital remove from the original objects.
The UMF Art Gallery hours are noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday and by appointment. For more information or to make an appointment, contact Sarah Maline at maline@maine.edu or 207-778-1062 or visit artgalleryumf.org.
Black and white image by Allen Morris, ISO – 46 (Okoboji).
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