A Two-Person Photographic Exhibition Presented By Verve Gallery of Photography

Santa Fe, New Mexico (PRWEB) August 16, 2008

Janet Russek (http://santafephotogallery.com/?p=artist_biography&a=JR): Beautiful Vulnerabilities

Josephine Sacabo (http://santafephotogallery.com/?p=artist_biography&a=SA): New Work

Opening Reception: Friday, September 19, 2008, 5-7pm

Exhibit is on view through Saturday, November 8, 2008

Verve Gallery of Photography is pleased to present our fall two-person exhibition with local Santa Fe photographer, Janet Russek and New Orleans photographer, Josephine Sacabo. The exhibition is on view Friday, September 19, 2008 through Saturday November 8, 2008 at Verve Gallery of Photography, with an Opening Reception on Friday, September 19, from 5-7pm.

Janet Russek

Janet Russek's exhibition, Beautiful Vulnerabilities, is a culmination of her three latest bodies of work, the Pregnancy Series, the Doll Series and Still Lifes. All of Russek's images are created with a large format camera and result in black and white gelatin silver prints.

"The life cycle, with all its promise and poignancy, is the subject of Janet Russek's long-term photographic project The Seed Within. Russek began the project as a study of forms alluding to the fullness of pregnancy---ripe squashes, peaches, pears---photographed in natural light. She suspended organic matter such as egg yolks and ginseng roots within vessels of liquids, as beings in a womb. An element of decay crept in, suggesting later stages of a woman's life such as menopause and old age."

"More recently, Russek has moved into figurative work in two series on nude pregnant women and dolls. She photographs the women at close range so that bellies and breasts become abstracted, yet suffused with a divine glow, capturing her belief that "pregnancy is about hope, faith, and love." The portraits of dolls, however--- pale figures suspended in a black void---explore the darker aspects of parenting and our human fragility and vulnerability."

-Kristin Barendsen

Alongside her artistic work, Russek is also a private fine art photography dealer in Santa Fe. She and her husband, David Scheinbaum, founded Scheinbaum and Russek, Ltd., in 1980. The company maintains an inventory of contemporary and vintage photographic works, and it exclusively represents the estates of Eliot Porter and of Beaumont and Nancy Newhall.

The couple has collaborated on two books, Ghost Ranch: Land of Light (Balcony Press, 1997), and Images in the Heavens, Patterns on the Earth: The I Ching (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2005), which won the American Association of Museums award for design in 2005. Russek was a founding member of the New Mexico Council on Photography, and she has served on the boards of the Marion Center for Photographic Arts and the Association of International Photography Art Dealers. Her work is part of the permanent collections of several museums, including the New Mexico Museum (Santa Fe), the Bibliotecque Nationale (Paris), and the High Museum of Art (Atlanta).

Joséphine Sacabo

Joséphine Sacabo's work is characterized by highly subjective, introspective images that hover between reality and dream, often inspired by literary texts. She will be exhibiting works from her latest three series of work, Geometry of Echoes, Nocturnes and Lux Perpetua.

Geometry of Echos is a series dedicated to the memory of Josephine's mother. It is the narrative of a woman's life set around 1915. The images are of a woman seen through the eyes of a six year old child - impossibly beautiful as only the heart can perceive and remember her. Of the work, Josephine says, "They are the story of the original enchantment returned to me in all it's force through Art." These images are gelatin silver prints.

In addition to this series is the ongoing, Lux Perpetua a work in progress of photogravures, dedicated to Sor Juana Inez De La Cruz. Sor Juana lived in Mexico in the late 1600's and was a scholar, writer, poet and a nun who was very active in defending women's rights in Mexico through her writing and poetry which centered on freedom. Sacabo's says of the images in this series, "These images are moments of my life caught in the rim light of grace."

Nocturnes, Befriending the Night: Images of the Psyche, is a series of photogravures based on the psyche of dreams. Of this series, Sacabo says, "I photograph things not as I 'see' them but rather as I might have 'dreamt' them. We dream in images... [they are the metaphorical pictures of our individual realities, through them we can forge a deeper connection between ourselves and the world... you have the moon moving across the sky in her different phases, looking in on us, seeing our dreams, the "Nocturnes' are what she sees."

Sacabo, an internationally acclaimed photographer, has had four books of her own work published including "Une Femme Habitée" in Paris in 1991 by Editions Marval; award winning "Pedro Paramo" in 2002 by the University of Texas Press; "Cante Jondo" in 2002 by 21st Publishing; and "Duino Elegie" in 2005 also by 21st Publishing. Sacabo has had solo shows in Paris, London, Madrid, Toulouse, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other major U.S. cities. Her work has also been widely published in magazines in the United States and Europe, including Camera Arts, B&W Magazine, Rangefinder Magazine, ZOOM and others. Her work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art - N.Y.; The Museum of Modern Art - N.Y.; The Art Institute of Chicago; Houston Museum of Fine Arts; The Smithsonian - Washington D.C.; The Library of Congress; The New Orleans Museum of Art; The Wittliff Collection -- Austin; The Bibliothèque Nationale -- Paris; and La Maison de la Photo -- Paris; among others.Joséphine Sacabo has taught highly acclaimed workshops at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles - France and at the Santa Fe Workshops.

Contact Information For VERVE Gallery Of Photography

Jennifer Schlesinger, Gallery Director

Verve Gallery of Photography

219 East Marcy Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501

http://www.santafephotogallery.com

director@vervefinearts.com

Tele: 505.982.5009 Fax: 505.982.9111

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