January 2011

The Light Factory Contemporary Museum of Photography and Film in Charlotte, NC, Offers Exhibits

The Light Factory Contemporary Museum of Photography and Film in Charlotte, NC, is presenting several exhibit including: The Night Time is the Right Time: Photographs by Mitchell Kearney, on view in the Middleton McMillan Gallery through Jan. 8, 2012; Streetwise: Masters of 60’s Photography, on view in the Knight Gallery through Jan. 22, 2012; and The Calm Before the Storm: Human Interaction with the Natural Landscape, on view in the Knight Gallery from Jan. 30 through May 13, 2012.

Streetwise builds on what Swiss photographer Robert Frank began with his new “snapshot aesthetic”, which was brought to the foreground with the domestic release of his ground breaking book The Americans, in January 1960. His focus on a more personal documentary style would influence a new generation of photographers - Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, Jerry Berndt, Ruth-Marion Baruch, Garry Winogrand, Bruce Davidson, Danny Lyon, and Ernest Withers, all of whom are featured in Streetwise alongside works by Frank.

Intent on redefining the nation based on what they saw, documentary photographers were increasingly concerned with revealing a more realistic, sometimes dire, but always challenging view of an America undergoing change. Ranging from the “outlaw culture” of bikers and chain gangs; Boston’s red light district known as the Combat Zone; Black Panthers; the gritty streets and neighborhoods of New York; the politically charged South; to the America’s darker subcultures. Many of these photographers spent time with their subjects and wanted their photographs to represent the larger narrative of actual events.

The Calm Before the Storm: Human Interaction with the Natural Landscape continues the examination of man and his relationship with the environment, a photographic theme that began with the influential 1975 exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape. New Topographics rejected the 19th century romanticized view of the environment and focused on the intervention of industry - land transformed by human presence, directly and/or indirectly. Today, we are asking if this precarious relationship has gotten better, is currently at a standstill, or has gotten much worse? The Calm Before the Storm includes works by Pipo Nguyen-duy, Camille Seaman, Eric Tomberlin, and Kathleen Robbins, photographers who are exploring the external landscape and who understand the paradoxes inherent in the juxtapositions of man and the natural environment.

Also on view at The Light Factory is the exhibit, The Night Time is the Right Time: Photographs by Mitchell Kearney, on view in the Middleton McMillan Gallery through Jan. 8, 2012. Although Kearney has photographed a variety of subjects throughout his career, his images have just a few things in common: a love for music, the entertainment industry, and the bright lights of the big city.

The Light Factory’s mission is to promote the power of image, in Charlotte and beyond, by informing, challenging, and stimulating audiences through photography, film, and other light-based media to see their world through a different lens.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Center at 704/333-9755 or visit (www.lightfactory.org).

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