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Featuring Three Outstanding Artists in Photography

John Clarke

Annarita Gentile

Aubrey J. Kauffman

 

Opening Reception:

Saturday, March 9, 2019 | 6-9 PM

Perkins Center for the Arts

30 Irvin Avenue | Collingswoood, NJ

 

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About the Artists:

John Clarke’s interest in photography developed while he was an architectural student at Cooper Union in the late 1960s. The Cooper students were generally, very talented, poor, living in rundown lofts on the lower east side and struggling to find their way into the design world. The first year architectural students took all their classes with the art students, so they got a great introduction to freehand drawing, two and three dimensional design. At the suggestion of one of his design professors, John bought a used Nikon and began to shoot black and white film around New York City. Slowly photography began to be part of John’s architectural presentations.

After receiving a master’s degree from Columbia University, John was offered a position as an assistant professor at the University of Virginia School of Architecture teaching first year year design. The subject of his photography shifted from urban landscapes to rural landscapes and traditional building structure. John’s photo medium changed from black and white film to color slides. The slides left no room for post processing. The crop and exposure you got at the time of taking the photo was the end of the story. You had to get the image right in the camera.

Fast forward some years, John moved to New Jersey and founded Clarke Caton Hintz, a high recognized, award winning architectural and planning firm based in Trenton. During the time John was practicing architecture, the world changed from analog to digital. When he started, architects drew everything by hand. Now, virtually everything an architect designs is drawn with the aid of a computer. The same dramatic change has occurred in photography. Architects and designers went from having vast color slide collections to using digital cameras, Lightroom and Photoshop to illustrate their design intentions.

While in architectural practice, John specialized in the design of large scale, mixed use communities. This interest in urban design gave him a reason to travel extensively both in the U.S and abroad. Photography became critical to his urban design work and documenting his travels became a source of great enjoyment.

Since retirement from architectural practice, John has devoted his artistic talents to fine art photography. His background as an architect is evident in the composition and structure of his photos. A life time of looking intensely at his surrounding is evident in the quality of his images.

 

Annarita Gentile – As a photographer, I aim to reflect the world around me as I experience it. That is saying a lot, to try to show in an image a personal experience. Some of this aim is accomplished through composition and editing are a result of an individual process and a lot of luck.

We carry emotional narratives deep within our internal world. The narrative holds the meaning to what we see. The mind reacts to an image in .33 seconds. Once we registered what we see, our own meaning is applied to the image.

My work as an artist coincides with my psychoanalytic career. I approach all of my endeavors with a desire to understand my own motivations and how my perspective is formed by my feelings. My emotional perspective and hopefully, expressed production is evident in both my artistic pursuits and professional hours.

For me, the creative process on a shoot occurs in a seamless process from the drive that comes from inspiration to the act of composition. Studio work is an attempt to continue the messaging by selecting certain images and editing which involves a variety of choices.

The message in this portfolio is one of glorious celebration through shapes and colors. For me, this work symbolizes a part of the story of the natural journey from hibernation, and germination, to the blossoming period shown here. What is expressed through the colors, shapes textures and the infinite possibilities of these flowers is a triumph and celebratory victory. And as brilliant as it is, there is some darkness and the sense that change is not far away. This is about the immediacy of the moment. The photos in this collection are flowers in Botanical Gardens in Pennsylvania and Maine, as well as various wooded locations.

 

Aubrey J. Kauffman is a photographer living and working in New Jersey.  He received his BA in Media Arts from New Jersey City University and his MFA in Visual Arts from Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts.  He has taught photography at Mason Gross, Middlesex County College, Mercer County Community College and Community College of Philadelphia.

He was Guest Curator for  “Landscapes: Social Political Traditional” at Rider University, in Lawrenceville, NJ, and was Co-Curator for “On Photography: Culture, History and the Narrative” with LaToya Ruby Frazier at the Mason Gross Galleries in New Brunswick.

His photography has been included in group exhibitions including: The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ; The Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover DE, The Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester MA; The 38th Annual Wind Challenge Exhibition Series at the Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia , PA and Expo 35 at the b.j. spoke gallery in Huntington, New York.

He has exhibited in solo shows at The New Jeresey State Museum, Trenton, NJ; Enfoco at 7th and 2ND Street Gallery, New York, NY; Southern Light Gallery in Amarillo, Texas; the Marguerite & James Gallery Hutchins Gallery at the Gruss Center of Visual Arts in  Lawrenceville, NJ and the Rider University Art Gallery in Lawrenceville, NJ.

He was awarded the Brovero Photography Prize by Mason Gross. His work was named “Best in Collection” by Alpha Art Gallery in New Brunswick, NJ.  He was awarded  3rd Place in the Urban Landscapes exhibit at the New York Center for Photographic Arts.

His work is represented in the permanent collections of the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton, NJ,  Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ and Johnson & Johnson’s Corporate Headquarters in New Brunswick, NJ.

At present he is a Contributing Producer for “State of the Arts” broadcast on PBS and a Contributing Journalist for US1 in Princeton, NJ.

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