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| B. Hollyman Gallery |
You may have seen my recent posts here or on tumblr, documenting my little weekend adventures while I sat FFF out last weekend. I love rediscovering my city, the city of Austin (Tupac, anyone?). It's been a while since I visited a gallery and, more specifically, a gallery that exhibits fine art silver gelatin prints. I'm talking about hand-printed photographs developed in a darkroom on archival paper.
It sounds ridiculous but I honestly got teary-eyed.
It was like coming home after too much time has passed before a family visit. It reminded me why I love photography and have only grown to love it more since I originally became interested in the art as a freshman in high school in the early nineties and took my first photography class with Ms. Knight at Ursuline Academy in Dallas. She was awesome. Wild, frizzy red hair, big seventies glasses, bell bottoms, button down oxford shirts and a VW bus. We called her a "Groover". Being in the darkroom was a mystical experience.
Working for an online marketing company, I too often get caught up in digital trends and the latest this and the latest that, not that I personally embody the latest this or latest that but mentally these things consume me ... drain me. I've been a Mac user for years and getting the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S hasn't made it easier to stay offline and not get sort of disconnected. I've discovered lots of cool new local spots via different apps, review sites, and the like so I'm not discrediting the value of digital "stuff". And networking has been valuable, too. I love social media and interacting with people.
At any rate, it's been so long since I've stood in front of a hand-printed photograph developed using film; I was so strangely in love with the actual print, textures and tones that I was almost disconnected from the subject matter. The exhibit I saw was by photographer Loli Kantor and the project - And If A Voice Was Heard, which documents "...history, loss, and survival, as well as the remnants of Jewish life in Eastern Europe after the Holocaust and a tumultuous century of the rise and fall of the Soviet regime." I said I was almost disconnected. Only momentarily - before the aesthetic and the emotion merged together for me. I highly suggest visiting the B. Hollyman Gallery and checking out Loli Kantor's exhibit.
My point: it was awesome to see non-digital art. It reinforced why I've had so many arguments re: digital vs. analog photography. Digital cameras are amazing but this exhibit is proof that they can NOT do the same justice to capturing what the photographer sees as analog can. There's a certain soul, depth, and tonal qualities that cannot be duplicated.
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