| For more information about this article or gallery, please call the gallery phone number listed in the last line of the article, "For more info..." |
March Issue 2007
University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC, Features Photographs by Fran Hall
The University of South Carolina's McKissick Museum in Columbia, SC, is presenting the exhibit, Small Wonder: Insect Photos by Fran Hall, which captures the habits and forms of some of the world's tiniest creatures in photographs by Hall, who has spent most of his 91 years photographing nature. The exhibit is on view through Mar. 31, 2007.
More than 50 photographs of insects, along with a video describing insect behavior, will be on display. The photographs capture the interdependence between species, as well as their intriguing and sometimes formidable appearances.
"This exhibition of photographs lets us get up close and marvel at insects' interesting forms and habits," said Lynn Robertson, director of the museum. "It is amazing how complex the life of an insect can be and the variety of important roles they play in the balance of our natural environment. Bugs are a part of our everyday life, but few of us have ever taken the opportunity to really look at them. Getting eyeball to eyeball with an ant or a caterpillar seldom enters our minds."
Hall pioneered the work of nature photography as we know it today. In the 1940s, he began a 35-year working relationship with the Audubon Society, whose mission is to conserve and restore natural ecosystems and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the earth's biological diversity. With them, he produced and photographed a film called Land of the Four Corners, which explored environmental ecosystems.
Hall partnered with Disney Studios to produce footage of insects in films such as The Living Desert, Nature's Half Acre and Secrets of Life. By capturing insects for film, he led the way for the new popular genre of documentary nature films.
Small Wonder will be a lead-up exhibit to the installation of the museum's permanent natural science exhibit, due to open in August.
"This is a great exhibit for families," Robertson said. "Bugs are always a popular favorite with children, and this exhibit lets even the most bug-a-phobic adult get up close to marvel at the role insects play in our world."
For further information check our SC Institutional Gallery listings, contact Jason Shaiman at 803-777-2515 or visit (www.cla.sc.edu/MCKS/).
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing
Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc.
Copyright© 2007 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston
Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts
from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts
Online, Copyright© 2007 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved
by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use
without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina
Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.