Tonight: First Impressions

from CCNY:

Opening Reception:
Wednesday, September 16th from 6–8 pm

Marco Breuer, Eric William Carroll, Dan Estabrook, Michael Flomen, Michelle Kloehn, Chris McCaw


First Impression is an exhibition of contemporary work by artists employing arcane photographic methodologies resulting in unique, first-generation imagery. The selection of work includes examples of calotypes, tintypes, photograms and other unusual, unlikely and untimely processes by featured artists, Marco Breuer, Eric William Carroll, Dan Estabrook, Michael Flomen, Michelle Kloehn, and Chris McCaw.

Celebrating its 125th year, the Camera Club of New York is marking this important anniversary with an exhibition of work by artists who draw upon the origins of the medium to address contemporary photographic issues and practices. Each of the artists works within a distinct set of parameters, exploring the nature of process and representation.

Marco Breuer uses various tools to alter the surface and sensitivity of photographic papers, creating abstract images that question the basic nature of the medium. Eric William Carroll works with the least expensive photosensitive medium available, commercial blueprint paper, making life-size shadow photographs suggestive of performance art. Employing Calotype negatives and skillful draftsmanship, Dan Estabrook uses his dreams as source material, making images that defy our understanding of physical existence, and challenging the assumption that photographs are rooted in reality. Michael Flomen’s innovative gelatin silver photograms document his interactions with the natural world. Working outdoors at night, Flomen makes images in fields and forests, rivers and ponds, even utilizing the most ethereal of light sources, fireflies. Michelle Kloehn’s tintypes, made in her studio, depict vaguely identifiable forms fashioned from discarded materials. Dark and intriguing, her work has the appearance of chemically induced expressionism. Chris McCaw records the passage of time by allowing the sun to burn through photographic paper while traversing the sky. These enigmatic, large-format solarized paper negatives allude to celestial anomaly and prophetic revelation.

In conjunction with the exhibition, CCNY will host a panel discussion with the artists, moderated by Curator Michael Paris Mazzeo and Russell Lord, recipient of the 2009-2010 Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellowship in the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Please check our website for more details.

This exhibition runs from September 16 – October 30th.
Gallery hours: Monday–Saturday 12-6 pm

Please visit us at:
The Camera Club of New York
336 West 37th Street, Suite 206
(bet. 8th and 9th Avenues)
New York, New York 10018
212.260.9927
www.cameraclubny.org