The role of photography in contemporary art will be explored in an exhibit set to open at the main gallery of Rockefeller Arts Center at the State University of New York at Fredonia. Entitled “Lines Not Drawn: Contemporary photographic depictions, fictions and contradictions,” the exhibit will open with a reception from 7 to 9 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 7.
Supported by a Carnahan-Jackson Fund for the Humanities grant from the Fredonia College Foundation, “Lines Not Drawn” will feature contemporary photographers investigating the diverse practices of optical image making.
The exhibit will encompass digital and traditional photographic manipulations exploring a variety of subject matter including portraiture, street photography, micro and macro inspection and collage.
Six artists will display their works in the exhibit. They are:
- Susan Dunkerley (Waco, Texas). Dunkerley studied at the University of Missouri – Columbia (BFA, BSed) and at Pratt Institute (MFA). She is an associate professor, teaching in the department of art at Baylor University. Dunkerley’s photographs document temporary collages and sets constructed in her studio windows. Her photographs have been exhibited and published nationally and in Europe. Her work has been recognized with a number of awards, including the 2001 Fellowship from Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh, Pa., and the 2002 Carol Crow Memorial Fellowship Award from the Houston Center for Photography in Houston, Texas. Photographs by Dunkerley are also included in many private and public collections, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
- Michael Ensdorf (Evanston, Ill.). Ensdorf is an associate professor and associate dean of arts and sciences at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He teaches courses in photography, media criticism, new media and visual communication. Ensdorf's work was included in the “Iterations” exhibition at the International Center of Photography in New York and in the book of the same name published by MIT Press. His work was also included in the “Photography after Photography” exhibition, touring museums in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, Finland and finishing at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. His work is also represented in the German and English editions of the book, “Photography after Photography: Memory and Representation in the Digital Age,” published by G+B Arts. Working with video stills, Ensdorf attempts to unravel, unpack and analyze the singular experienced moment. He works from digital video, extracting stills, and uses Photoshop to isolate, enhance and combine images.
- Robin Dru Germany (Slaton, Texas). Germany is an associate professor of photography and digital technology at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. She has received numerous grants and awards for her work, including a Polaroid Artist’s Award. Germany’s photographic work is an inquiry into the nature of being human using staged and constructed fictions. Her group of works for this exhibit is titled “Difficult Nature.” The title refers to nature and mankind’s relationship with it.
- Liz Lee (Fredonia). Born in Memphis, Tenn., Lee received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1990 and a Master of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Photography in May 1996. Her work has appeared in such national and international exhibitions as the SIGGRAPH 2004, 2003, 2000 and 1996 Art Galleries, "Out of the Darkroom" at the Miami University Art Museum in Miami, Ohio, “ArCADE IV” (sponsored by Adobe UK), “D-Art 2004” (part of the Information Visualization Conference in London England and Computer Graphics, Imaging and Visualisation 2004 in Penang, Malaysia), “ASCI Digital 2002: Envisioning Time, Space and the Future at the New York Hall of Science,” “IV2001 Digital Art Gallery” in the Brunei Gallery in London, England, and “Digital Visions” at the Center for Contemporary Art in Sacramento, Calif. Lee’s solo exhibitions include the Zone VI Gallery at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kan., and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, Mich. She also has work in the permanent collection of the Novorsibirsk State Art Museum in Novorsibirsk, Russia. Lee draws influence in her work from postmodern thinkers that claim that photography is not the stimulus for theory, but the experience of it. An associate professor and chair of the Department of Visual Arts and New Media at the State University of New York at Fredonia, Lee teaches all levels of photography and digital imaging.
- Kathy Pilat (Evanston, Ill.). Pilat, born in Chicago, received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in visual communications from Northern Illinois University and a Master of Arts in photography from Columbia College. Her work was shown in Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Photography’s “Illinois Photographer’s in the 90s: The Midwest Photographer’s Project exhibition.” She has also exhibited at the Houston Center for Photography, the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, Mich., Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Illinois State University, Randolph Street Gallery, Artemisia Gallery, Centro Colombo Americano in Medellin, Colombia, South America, and others. She curated an exhibition of Dorothea Lange photographs for the Museum of Contemporary Photography and recently co-curated an exhibition of photographs from the Chicago Housing Authority called, “The Promise of Public Housing: 1936 – 1983.” Pilat has taught photography and digital imaging at DePaul University, Roosevelt University, and Columbia College. She currently teaches photography at New Trier High School, and was chair of the art department for nine years before leaving the position to further pursue art making, curating, and teaching. Pilat’s photography is a study of markings that explore the underlying, the internal and external, and that which is above and below the surface.
- Roger Sayre (Jersey City, NJ). Sayre is currently chair of the Department of Fine Arts at Pace University, Pleasantville campus, where he teaches all levels of photography. He has shown his work internationally and curated the exhibitions “This is Not a Photograph,” and “Pageants of Light.” He lives in Jersey City, NJ and also runs the tiny Brunswick Window gallery. Sayre will be exhibiting work from a new chess piece series and also work from the “Flight Series,” which is made of paper airplanes created from light-sensitive, unexposed photographic paper. The paper is folded into a plane in a dark room then is briefly exposed to light before being unfolded and processed through a series of photographic chemicals. The amount of light that is able to penetrate the folds of the paper in the airplane form influences the tone of the finished work.
“Lines Not Drawn” runs through Sept. 30. Gallery hours are 2 to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 2 to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 to 6 p.m. Sunday.
