The Caldbeck Gallery Opens for ‘Seven Photographers’

From September 6 through October 26, the Caldbeck Gallery, 12 Elm Street in Rockland, will show the work of photographers John Goodman of Friendship ME/Wellesley MA, Koichiro Kurita ofJapan, Dirk McDonnell of Camden ME, Ni Rong of Rockport ME/Boston MA, Jan Rosenbaum of Rockport ME, Allison V. Smith of Dallas TX, and Todd Watts of Blanchard ME. “SEVEN PHOTOGRAPHERS” includes a selection of work by each of the seven artists. An opening reception will take place on First Friday, September 6, from 5 – 8 pm. 

John Goodman says of his work, “I am drawn to the human body and all of its contradictions, all the while exploring the contest between light and dark, grit and tenderness, and power and grace”. The pieces in this show are from his body of work called “Not Recent”. His work is in numerous museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Koichiro Kurita’s new work is called “Walking”. The artist explains, “It’s the smell of the forest that I sense immediately as I walk into the woods. Each season and within it, each time of day, has a different smell. The effect of those fragrances is an emotional and aesthetic experience. By walking in the woods, I create freedom of the spirits through my senses.” The artist recently moved back to his homeland of Japan, after living in the states and working in Maine in the summertime for many years.

Dirk McDonnell’s large black and white photographs chronicle his extensive travels throughout the world. His work is in the permanent collections of the Farnsworth Art Museum, the Portland Museum of Art, Colby College Museum of Art, the University of New England at Westbrook College, the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe NM, the Bravo Center in Oaxaca, Mexico, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.

Ni Rong’s work almost always includes a human being in it. She says it is because she loves people and loves photographing people. “Just as one could not run away from his or her own shadow, I end up finding myself not able to stop photographing people even though I am terrified of doing so. I think it is about capturing people in their ordinary daily life, that tells something which is honest and true, something uplifting, something with beauty and strength. I seek and photograph those moments that are there, waiting to be captured and revealed to remind us who we are”.

Jan Rosenbaum calls the work in this exhibit, “Mise on Scene”, because he sees these images as if they were a stage setting in a play. He says, “the isolated subjects in these landscapes are the stages, the objects, but they don’t quite enunciate. They portend, but never explain. They pretend to be important, to be spaces worthy of being photographed, worthy of memorialization, even of immortality”. His work is in the collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Cranbrook Museum, The New Museum, the Evanston Art Gallery, the Wayne State University Art History Library, and in private collections.

Allison V. Smith worked as a photojournalist for 7 newspapers over 15 years. In 2004, she left the Dallas Morning News to pursue freelance photography for editorial clients and fine art photography. She began to focus on the landscape and personality of Marfa TX and Rockport ME. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. The work in this show is about Texas.

Todd Watts creates wide-ranging, often large-scale, color photographs using both traditional and digital technologies. The two new works in this exhibit are being shown for the first time. The artist’s work is represented in many museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Fogg Museum, Yale Art Gallery, and in Maine, the Portland Museum of Art, and the University of Maine Museum of Art.

Gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday 11-4, and Sunday 1-4. For information, please call the gallery at 207 594 5935, or email caldbeck@midcoast.com.