Dennis DeHart: Fine Art Photography: Oregon

Showing posts with label Oregon. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Then.Now.Here.

Six of my photographs will be included Then. Now. Here., which is a photography exhibition curated by guest juror Motoya Nakamura. The projected/slideshow exhibition is part of Portland Photo Month and will be included in the following venues.

PORTLAND PHOTO MONTH OPENING RECEPTION

Date/Time: Wednesday, April 3^rd 8pm-9:30pm

Location: Oregon Historical Society (1200 SW Park Avenue)

Details: Help us kick off Portland Photo Month in style. The evening will include the first screening of "Then. Now. Here." with live music by Portland jazz/swing trio Boy and Bean. Light snacks and drinks will be served and Photolucida's photography monographs will also be for sale. Join us for a festive evening.

FIRST FRIDAY SCREENING

Date/Time: Friday, April 5^th 6-9pm

Location: Newspace Center for Photography (1632 SE 10th Avenue)

FIRST THURSDAY SCREENING

Date/Time: Thursday, April 4^th 8pm-9pm

Location: Regional Arts & Culture Council building facade (411 NW Park Avenue)

UMPQUA COMMUNITY COLLEGE (Roseburg, Oregon)

Date/Time: Thursday, April 25th

Location: Auditorium (1140 Umpqua College Rd, Roseburg, OR)

PHOTOLUCIDA'S PORTFOLIO WALK

Date/Time: Thursday, April 18^th 6-9pm

Location: Castaway (1900 NW 18th Ave.)

PEARL DISTRICT GALLERY WALK

Date/Time: Saturday, April 20^th 8-9pm

Location: DeSoto Building facade (122 NW 8th Avenue)

BLUE SKY GALLERY

Date/Time A continuous slideshow will also run throughout the month of April in the window.
Location: Blue Sky Gallery (122 NW 8th Avenue)

Monday, December 31, 2012

Nez Perce and Photography

Doug Bar, Snake River, Hells Canyon, Oregon. Historic site of tragic Nez Perce crossing.

Currently reading Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan. I saw many of Curtis's prints in Seattle's Pioneer Square some 25 years ago. While in graduate school, Curtis and his photographs were touched upon in photographic history classes, though generally through the lens of their problematics in terms of representation. Reading Egan's contemporary account is highly engaging, historically informative, and a fresh view on Curtis and his vision.

Egan writes at length about Chief Joseph and his legacy. While visiting the Wallawa mountains in Oregon (the original home of the Nez Perce and Chief Joseph) I felt sad for the Nez Perce people who had to give up basically everything. The book Chief Joseph and the Nez Perces: A Photographic History by Bill and Jan Moeller documents the battlefield, campsites, river crossings, and trails that the Nez Perce travelled while fleeing the US Army in 1877.

Map of the Nez Perce journey while fleeing the US Army

Rebecca Solnit's 1996 essay, The Postmodern Old West, or The Precision of Cowboys and Indians, is a contemporary critical reading of varying mythologies associated with the American west. You can read the essay: http://www.ucpress.edu/content/pages/10855/10855.ch01.pdf. Ms. Solnit will be in the Palouse at the end of this month, both at UI and WSU. I am very much looking forward to meeting her and showing Ms. Solnit around WSU.

In her essay The Struggle of Dawning Intelligence: Creating, Revising, and Recognizing Native American Monument (1999), Ms. Solnit discusses the book of photographs by Drex Brooks entitled Sweet Medicine: Sites of Indian Massacres Battlefields and Treaties. Nicole Pasulka writes in her introduction for an interview with Brooks for the Morning News, "The history, culture, and even present-day existence of Native Americans are often unnoticed outside reservations. In his “Sweet Medicine” project, Drex Brooks photographed historical sites where conflict between Native Americans and white settlers occurred. Brooks’s work forces audiences to consider the massacres and exploitation Native Americans suffered at the hands of these settlers. The stillness of these overgrown or repopulated sites reminds us of what’s been forgotten and what’s missing." You can see some pictures from the book and read an interview in the Morning News Sweet Medicine.