A Photographic Arbor Day

 

The last Friday of April is set aside annually in celebration of National Arbor Day, a holiday which encourages the planting and caring for of trees and other foliage.  According to our good friend, Wikipedia, it originated in Nebraska during the early 1870's and has since spread to a global level.

What better way to celebrate the greenest of holidays with a vertically integrated product: trees make paper, photographs are printed on paper, photographs on paper look FABULOUS on your walls!  See the logic there?

So in honor of the 140th Arbor Day here is a small forests' worth of the photography world's best trees!

Mitch Dobrowner: Wind Swept Tree

 

 

Maggie Taylor: Oh, Happy Day!

 

Jerry Uelsmann: Untitled, 1969

 

 

Josef Hoflehner: Elephant Hill Pathway

 

Jeffrey Conley: Snow Covered Branches

 

Takeshi Shikama: Central Park #21

 

Jeri Eisenberg: Magnolia, No. 9

 

 

Susan Burnstine: Forever

 

Brett Weston: Holland Canal

Niniane Kelley: Palm

 

 

Charles Grogg: Bonsai (Juniper)

 

 

Jefferson Hayman: Tree, Central Park

 

 

Keliy Anderson-Staley: Plum Tree

 

David Fokos: Haybales, Ripsa, Sweden

 

Henry Gilpin: Trees, Reflection

Dan Burkholder: Tree in April Snow, Catskills

 

Pine-ing for any of these images?  Don't have a collection and looking for one to take root?  Already have one but looking to branch out?  Want me to stop with these ridiculous tree jokes? Don't be such a crabapple! Come into the John Cleary Gallery or give us a call and we'd love to help find that perfect photograph for you.

David Fokos featured in Rangefinder and Natural Landscape Photography

 

Recent exhibitioner, David Fokos, has been featured in this month's edition of Rangefinder:

"When David Fokos takes a photo, his goal is to create the feeling he wants the viewer to experience; the objects in his images are simply devices to stir up specific emotions. 'With my work, I am not trying to show the viewer what these places look like, but rather what they fell like.  It is my hope that, looking at my work, you may viscerally share with me the experience of these places,' he says."

– Paul Slaughter (click here for the full article)

Foggy Night, Stafford, Texas

 

Concomitantly, Natural Landscape Photography Blog also has an extensive interview with David, focusing on process, the edition conundrum, early influences and a range of other topics.

Our skin reacts to sunlight, another stimulus, but how long does it take for us to get a tan or sunburn?  The point is that the world exists as a continuum, not just the artificial, frozen, slice of time the camera presents to us in a snapshot.  Our bodies respond to the world in a cumulative way, averaging our experience as we pass through time.  Using my camera to capture the passage of time through long exposures, I can reveal what our world “looks” like based on a longer time scale.  My photographic process acts as a translator – translating from the “invisible” world of non-instantaneous events, into the visible world of a photographic print.

(Click here for the full interview)

Jetty, Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts

 

Though David's show here at the John Cleary Gallery has unfortunately passed, we still have a large selection of his works on display (and those that aren't are easily accessible).  Stop in and see what all the fuss is about!

David Fokos: New Work

 

Please join us Saturday, January 14, from 6 – 8 p.m. for the opening of David Fokos: New Work. The exhibition will run through Saturday, February 11. The artist will be in attendance for the opening reception.

Steam, Glen Cove, Washington, 2000

 

The John Cleary Gallery is proud to welcome back San Diego based photographer, David Fokos, for his fourth solo exhibition. Fokos, whose work hauntingly captures the silent dignity of its surroundings, has made a name for himself as a unique voice in the field of black and white landscape photography.

Long Poles, San Simeon, California, 2010

 

Just as our impression of the world is a compilation of numerous experiences, so does Fokos allow long exposures to capture an “average time” of a particular setting. In this way he wields his camera more as a scientific instrument, likening the experience to a biologist’s use of a microscope or an astronomer’s telescope by revealing what is felt but often unseen.

Foggy Night, Stafford, Texas, 2005

 

Fokos’ work has been exhibited both across the United States and internationally, appearing in galleries and institutions ranging from the Emon Gallery in Japan to the Robert Klein Gallery in Boston, MA to the photography collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Arlington Memorial Bridge, Washington, D.C., 2011

 

For the complete exhibition catalogue, please see the John Cleary Gallery’s respective webpage here.