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May Issue 2009
The Light Factory
in Charlotte, NC, Offers New Exhibition
The Light Factory Contemporary Museum of Photography and Film in Charlotte, NC, is presenting the exhibit, The Photographer as Filmmaker, a new exhibition now on display through June 28, 2009, in the Knight Gallery, inside Spirit Square.
The exhibition examines the relationship between still photography and motion pictures as distinct but closely related artforms. The exhibition features the work of eight photographers who, throughout their careers, have creatively interacted between photography, film, and more recently, video. The artists featured include William Klein, Stanley Kubrick, Mary Ellen Mark, Ralph Gibson, Sarah Moon, John Cohen, Emily Hanako Momohara, and Sarah A. Martin. In addition to the artists' photography, the exhibit features daily film screenings and two special evening events.
Each artist featured in this exhibit has found a unique and meaningful connection between still photography and filmmaking.
After working as an assistant to Robert Frank on his film, Pull My Daisy (1959), John Cohen began making his own movies as a way of combining his interest in music (he was a member of the New Lost City Ramblers) and a photographer.
Photographer William Klein's provocative and controversial images of city life in New York in the mid-1950s were already full of action when he shot the film, Muhammad Ali: The Greatest (1965, 1974).
Although best known as a world-famous filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick began his career as a still photographer for Look magazine, an experience that proved invaluable during his long film career.
Renowned photographer, editor, and book publisher Ralph Gibson also apprenticed with Robert Frank, helping him make the film, Me and My Brother (1968) and working as cinematographer on Conversations in Vermont (1969).
Artist Sarah Moon views her image-making process in photography and film as "one and the same, referring to her dream-like pictures as "slow motion rough cut[s] from a film."
Sarah A. Martin, who is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (NC), works simultaneously with moving and still images, selecting film or video over photography when she needs more time than a split second to tell a story.
One of documentary photographer Mary Ellen Mark's early assignments was shooting production stills on the sets of major films such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Years later, her photo essay on runaway children in Seattle became the basis of the Academy Award nominated film, Streetwise, which Mark made with her husband, filmmaker Martin Bell.
According to Emily Hanako Momohara, both mediums "come from the same technical and emotional language. Photography is like a haiku and video a song."
The exhibit features a series of feature-length films created by the artists displayed in the exhibit, which include the following: Muhammad Ali: The Greatest (1965, 1974) by William Klein; Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Impassioned Eye (2003) by Sarah Moon; and Streetwise (1985) by Mary Ellen Mark and Martin Bell.
The Light Factory Contemporary Museum of Photography and Film began as a photographers' cooperative in 1972. With the addition of film in 1999, the organization has had the opportunity to explore many new ideas and expand the parameters of its cultural landscape.
For further information
check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call TLF at 704/333-9755
or visit (www.lightfactory.org).
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