Photography and Sculpture

PETER AARON has been photographing great architecture for architects and designers since 1975. He learned his craft by interning with the renowned architectural photographer, Ezra Stoller. He has collaborated with celebrated architects Robert AM Stern, Charles Gwathmey, Centerbrook, KieranTimberlake, and many others as a contributing photographer for Architectural Digest. He won the AIA Collaborative Achievement Award in 2009.

There were times when my work transcended commercial and could be judged as fine art. During the massive task of transforming the archive from film to digital, many strong images have been revealed. At the same time, I converted a Canon 5D mark II to capture infrared only. This form of black and white took on an otherworldly look so that using this camera in Syria just before war broke out yielded some powerful images of architecture that no longer exists.

CHRIS BARTLETT’S photography practice encompasses personal and fine art, documentary and social justice portraiture, as well as commercial work. His work has been shown and published widely including at the Open Society Foundations Moving Walls, Photoville, Houston Fotofest, Hamburg Triennial, and the United Nations in Geneva. Bartlett has been interviewed by the BBC, NPR, Canadian Public Radio, and Al Jazeera among others.

Starting shortly after I arrived in New York City in the fall of 1981 and continuing for about 10 years, I expressed my personal vision through street photography. I carried my camera everywhere in search of the quiet moments where the subject was isolated in the context of the space around them. I sought to capture the beauty of the mundane commonalities that briefly appear as visual synchronicities.

For his commercial work, Bartlett is a still-life photographer working primarily in the fashion, beauty, and luxury goods industries. He has been published in virtually all the major fashion publications including Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. His commercial clients currently include Khaite, Martha Stewart, and Michael Kors.

JOSEPH LAWTON has taught photography at Fordham University for over 35 years. He has also taught at Hunter College, Pratt Institute, and the School of Visual Arts. He has been a recipient of grants from Light Work and the Southeast Center for Photography. His work has been published and is included in public and private collections. Exhibitions include PS1, Canton Museum, and OK Harris Gallery. A catalog of his photographs from the New York State Fair is available through Light Work, Syracuse University. His photography book, Plain Sight, was published by Waal-Boght press in 2016. Lawton holds a BS in Journalism from the University of Colorado and an MFA from Yale University.

DENISE OEHL moved from Northwest Ohio to New York City to study painting at The School of Visual Arts. She eventually began using photography as her medium of choice, first with pinhole and then with medium format film cameras. She is particularly drawn to the mechanical clicks and whirs of the camera. Oehl appreciates the hands-on approach, printing her hand-coated Cyanotype and palladium images in the darkroom.

My relationship to my environment is voyeuristic. This body of work is about a fleeting atmospheric moment. There is allure in a glimpse, an inkling that there is something sublime in the ordinary. My photographs represent everywhere and nowhere. The imagery might be familiar but is a private exchange between myself and the camera. I use medium format film cameras to capture my images. Load– ing the camera, advancing, and unloading the film are rituals that I enjoy. Each hand-coated palladium or Cyanotype print is unique. I am drawn to the practice and ritual of printing my images. Making prints by hand is a critical part of the creative process.

ROBERT OEHL received his MFA in Photography and Printmaking from Pratt Institute. The artist has participated in exhibitions at The John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY; The National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, UK; New Mexico History Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico; The Holland Tunnel Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; The Visual Studies Work- shop, Rochester NY; The Woodstock Artists Association and Museum, Woodstock, NY; The Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT, and The Gallery at Marygrove College, Detroit MI.

My photography is totally analog. I use a 4 x 5 inch pinhole camera because of its simplicity, distinctive soft focus, and requisite long exposures that better record time and movement. I pose for my own photographs because I want to be part of each step of the image making, but my presence in the image is incidental, and I don’t feel it reveals much about me. Photographs are timeless, so I try to avoid props such as clothing or objects that would provide a temporal context. I’m very interested in the chemical nature of photography. I develop my film in a coffee-based, homebrew developer which gives me a negative that is suitable for printing, and is more environmentally friendly than commercial chemical developers. My prints are made by hand coating cotton rag paper with a Ziatype or Cyanotype emulsion and exposing the paper, with it’s negative, under UV light. This process is unpredictable, often resulting in grainy images, and significant tone shifts. Sometimes, I age and patinate the photograph by waxing, rubbing, or scratching the surface. Subsequently, many of my photographs are unique and impossible to reproduce. In my process, I am solely involved in making the photograph.

PAMELA SUNDAY makes ceramic sculptures inspired by repetition, ritual, topologies, and the natural world. She came to this career later in life after working in banking and fashion advertising.

In the mid-90s, together with a group of fellow art directors, she decided to take a ceramics class at Greenwich House in New York. This happy accident completely transformed her life. She was irrevocably smitten, fascinated, and obsessed with clay and hand-building. She quickly developed a rigorous studio practice and never looked back.

Today, Sunday’s work is exhibited and collected internationally, and she collaborates with architects and designers to create sculptural installations and unique design objects. After decades of living and working in New York City, she moved to Catskill, NY in 2018.