Viewfind 7: A Group Photography Exhibition

The Page Bond Gallery is pleased to present VIEW FIND 7: A Group exhibition featuring work by Penny Ashford, Mary Ellen Bartley, Christa Bowden, David Douglas, Jeri Eisenberg, Wylie Garcia, Elijah Gowin, Emmet Gowin, Torkil Gudnason, Cynthia Henebry, Sally Mann, Ben Marcin, Amanda Means, Holly Morrison, Paulette Tavormina, and William Wylie opening Friday, January 26 from 6 to 8 PM. The exhibition will run through February 17, 2018.

Christa Bowden creates “camera-less photography” that conveys “a deep connection to home, place, nature, and the way that these things intertwine…” Inspired by childhood memories, a move from Atlanta to Lexington, VA, and the simple act of pulling weeds, her Roots and Nests series evokes the networks that connect us. Bowden collects plants, branches, and other natural specimens to “photograph” using a flatbed scanner. The prints are broken up, reconstructed, and encased in encaustic creating a “protective layer around the ideas of family and home.” Minimal and striking against a creamy surface, the dark, “vein-like” patterns of a branch’s bends or a plant’s intricate root system stretch and undulate across multiple panels, their organic forms ordered and suspended by square wooden frames and layers of smooth wax. Process and image merge, providing poetic metaphors of memory and preservation.

Bowden is an Associate Professor at Washington and Lee University where she developed the photography program in 2006. She earned a BA from Tulane University and MFA from the University of Georgia in 2000. Her work has been featured in exhibitions across the United States, is included in online and print publications, and has earned her awards such as a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship.

The large-scale photographs of David Douglas also utilize allusive forms to reference personal connections to a specific location. A northern Virginia-native, Douglas was originally trained as a painter. He began experimenting with photography as a teacher at Episcopal High School in Alexandria where he lives and works. He similarly reconstructs his scenes, photographing and scanning images and objects from the site, which are reworked with pencils, pens, and colored wax and compiled and altered in Photoshop. They are printed in large sections, coated with polymer, and hung like wallpaper on panels. With shadowed edges and fuzzy details, landscapes, buildings, and an occasional figure seem vaguely familiar but far away as if altered by memory and time. Moody and unsettling, “they’re metaphors for who we are, where we are, how we react to the land we walk across,” says Douglas.

Douglas earned a BA from Virginia Intermont College and an MFA from James Madison University in 1984. His works are included in numerous public, private, and corporate collections including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Chrysler Museum, and the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. He has also been featured in solo and group exhibitions alongside Chuck Close, Robert Mapplethorpe, Diane Arbus, Sally Mann, Lee Friedlander, and Hiroshi Sugimoto.