Eye of the Photographer: Four Guys, Two Galleries

Local Artist Exhibition at DAFA and Wilder Nightingale Galleries — runs May 28 – July 4

Kit Carson Road gallery owners David Anthony and Robert Nightingale will be opening a collaborative exhibit of four Taos photographers on Saturday, May 28, 2016. William Davis, Steve Immel, Cris Pulos, and Terry Thompson are four Taos photographers who collectively demonstrate the grace and energy of still photography in a dynamic show partnering the artists, the galleries, and the Taos Center for the Arts.

Alfred Stieglitz said that, “In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”  At a time when technology has made taking a photograph as simple as dialing a phone and its public exhibition via social media equally unmomentous, artists say that what differentiates real photography from the rest is in the eye of the photographer. The capture is not only in the image, it is as much in the suggestion of what isn’t visible–the emotional quality, the impermanence, the light.

Evidence of time and place factors heavily in the expression of all four photographers–in the scope of elegance of Southwest landscapes, the clean lines of sheep against sage and sky in the San Luis Valley, the pace of the traditional in Mexico, and light that follows motion in Nature.

Much of the work William Davis exhibits in this show stems from his time spent in Mexico where the states of Sonora, Chihuaha, and Sinoloa meet, but he also delivers a great deal in color, as in his photo, Lamy Train Graffiti. In his portfolio, “The Shepherd”, Steve Immel documents the annual cycle of sheepranching through the solitary life of a 76-year old Cuban-born sheepherder working in the San Luis Valley. Meanwhile, in photographs like El Capitan and Harvest Scene, Cris Pulos portrays the stunning land and the history of people in the West. The impressionistic “Garden Dreams”, a series by Terry Thompson, exemplifies his study of subjects in motion–in this case, a field of flowers.

Each of the photographers has studied and worked for years in the field, and the diversity of their experience speaks to the power of photography regardless of the cultural environment for it as an art. It will be an exciting exhibit distilling the substance in photography that remains untouched by the shifting of time.

There will be a preview to the show on Saturday, May 28, 4 – 5:30pm, that is a private ticketed reception and a benefit for Taos Center for the Arts. Tickets to the private reception are $20 and are available at the TCA office, DAFA, and Wilder Nightingale Fine Art, as well as online at tcataos.org. Immediately following it will be a public reception at both DAFA and Wilder Nightingale Fine Art, 5:30-7pm. For more information, please visit: http://davidanthonyfineart.com/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibits/