In Print: NOPA Members Book Signing
New Orleans Photo Alliance members with recent publications will sign copies of their books. Featuring Jane Fulton Alt, Bruce Keyes, George Long, Ann Marie Popko, Christopher Porche West, Muffin Sills, Jonathan Traviesa and Jennifer Zdon.
Location:
New Orleans Photo Alliance Gallery
1111 St. Mary St.
New Orleans, LA 70130
www.neworleansphotoalliance.org
Date:
Saturday, December 5, 2009
4-6pm
Look and Leave
Photographs and Stories from New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward
As a participant in New Orleans’s “Look and Leave” program, Jane Fulton Alt accompanied Lower Ninth Ward residents back to their homes for the first time since fleeing Hurricane Katrina. Alt’s photographs and stories reflect the intense drama of the epic loss this community endured while highlighting lasting hope and inspiration. It is through Alt’s social worker’s compassion and keen photographer’s eye that we are given a better understanding of what it meant to be a resident of the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans immediately following Hurricane Katrina. Published by the University of Georgia Press, 2009.
Bio:
Jane Fulton Alt was born in Chicago in 1951. Alt attended the University of Michigan (BA, 1973) and the University of Chicago (MA, 1975). She has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. Alt is the recipient of numerous awards and her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, New Orleans Museum of Art, Beinecke Library at Yale University, University of Illinois Comer Archive, Southeast Museum of Photography, Centro Fotografico Alvarez Bravo in Oaxaca, Mexico, Center for Photography at Woodstock, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, De Paul University Art Museum, and the private collections of Rick Bayless and William Hunt. Alt is the recipient of the 2007 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship Award and the 2007, 2008 and 2009 Ragdale Foundation Fellowship. In addition to photography she is a licensed clinical social worker, with a practice of 35 years.
Alt’s photographs explore universal issues of humanity, reflecting an interest in the mysteries of life and the non-material world. Her photographs ask us to consider issues of love, loss, and spirituality.
Field Guide to Nola
“Field Guide to Nola” is a collection of nature imagery taken in New Orleans by Patricia Bernstein. Each image is featured as a full page with a corresponding scientific identification list at the end. Through the healing ritual of daily nature walks in the empty golf course at City Park, Bernstein has realized that nature gives to us through the sun, through the oxygen, and through its majestic beauty. Says Bernstein, “This book is a small representation of a much larger environment. It is a reminder of what exists around us that we are too busy to visit. I like the old saying “stop and smell the roses.” I think more of us need to remember it and put nature back into our daily lives.”
Bio:
Patricia “Muffin” Bernstein is currently focused on making collages out of nature imagery. She is a graduate of Loyola University’s art program and earned her Masters in Fine Art from Florida State University. She has shown work through out the country and is looking forward to sharing her unique art with everyone. She was born in New Orleans in the 70s, and currently resides in MidCity. Muffin Bernstein enjoys teaching photography as well as digital art and bookbinding.
Spirit of New Orleans
This is not a book about New Orleans it is a book of New Orleans. It comes from the heart’s eye of a native, true to the creative passion that runs through our veins like fire. Bruce Keyes captures that passion, and our innocence, our sense of the sacred, our mourning and our unmitigated, irrepressible joy. Now, forever locked in the Pre-Katrina era, this documentary of The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Mardi Gras, the French Quarter, Magazine Street, Mardi Gras Indians and Jazz Funerals represent just some facets of the jewel comprising the “Big Easy”, that are elegantly portrayed on these pages. The subtractive quality of these engaging black and white photographs depict the people observed through Keyes lens, performers as well as spectators, their subtleties of gesture and expression, with the dignity they deserve.
Spirit of New Orleans is a three-decade odyssey through the streets of the city presented as a 228 page landscape format 9″ x 13″ case bound black and white book. Foreword by Dr. Richard Zakia, Professor Emeritus of the Rochester Institute of Technology School of Photographic Arts and Sciences.
Bio:
Bruce Keyes has over 30 years of experience with photographic processes. He applies a full range of techniques to a diverse range of subjects. Those of the documentary genre are often rendered in full tone black and white. “Spirit of New Orleans” documents his three-decade odyssey through the streets of New Orleans, a project illustrating the ethereal spirit of its people, the soul of this great city. He is available for
commissions of individual works or complete portfolios. His images are presented as archival inkjet prints on a range of watercolor papers and canvases, chosen both for image permanence as well as their subjective rendering of a particular photograph. Whether creating work for installation in residential, corporate or gallery settings, utmost consideration is taken to ensure harmony between the art and the space.
Katrina Days
“Katrina Days” is George Long’s intimate portrait of life in and around New Orleans during the two tumultuous years immediately following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Filled with more than eighty full-color photographs, “Katrina Days” depicts images of Hurricane Katrina’s massive trail of destruction along with people trying hard to adjust to the uncertainty in their lives. Long’s photographic perspective as a New Orleans insider offers readers an uncompromising view of pain, loss, and total frustration balanced with humor and hope for America’s most authentic and soulful city.
Bio:
George Long serves on the board of directors of the New Orleans Photo Alliance and has played an active role in the New Orleans/Gulf South Chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) since 1991. He is a charter member of Editorial Photographers and has been a member of the Professional Photographers of America since 1984. He worked in TV production for 13 years before becoming a full-time professional photographer in 1990. George works regularly with celebrities and has presented many one-man shows of his fine artphotographs. Images from his extensive stock photography collection have been published worldwide.
The Richness of Life
Breathe a little deeper and imagine the scent of salt air as you soak in the natural pleasures of Cape Cod, captured through the lens of photographer and Massachusetts native Ann Marie Popko. Settle in for a serene trip to the beach and enjoy 62 color images featuring locations in Provincetown, North Truro and Wellfleet. Produced though on-demand publisher Blurb, this is Ann Marie’s first book.
Bio:
Ann Marie Popko loves the crystalline, grounding beauty of Cape Cod and spends most summers with her camera and her family in Massachusetts. In the off-season, Ann Marie lives in the French Quarter and designs whimsical feathered accessories and special occasion headpieces for Mardi Gras, cocktail parties and weddings. She has had past lives as a pastry chef, a window and set dresser and continues to explore a diverse creative life through writing and photography. Ann Marie is the Editor of the New Orleans Photo Alliance monthly e-newsletter.
Portraits: Photographs in New Orleans 1998-2009
This collection of portraits by New Orleans photographer Jonathan Traviesa delivers compelling insights into the city and its inhabitants. Each portrait captures the New Orleans characters in a back yard, on the front porch, or in another intimate setting, with the collection as a whole painting a vivid portrait of the city itself and the many ways people choose to live in it. Published by UNO Press, 2009.
Bio:
Jonathan Traviesa is a photographer and artist living in New Orleans since the late 1990s. Since graduating from the University of New Orleans in 2001, he has had numerous solo and group exhibitions of in New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Chicago. In 2005 the Times Picayune voted his Katrina photo-sign installation best art show of the year. Traviesa is a founding member of The Front gallery and will have a book signing and concurrent exhibition there during October and November of 2009. His work is collected privately around the United States and is included in the permanent collections of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Eyes of Eagles: New Orleans’ Black Mardi Gras Indians
This 120 page book by New Orleans photographer Christopher Porché West features color and black and white images captured on the streets and in the studio dating back to 1980. “Mr. Porché-West has been THE consummate documentarian of the African-American Mardi Gras Indian community for several decades. His visual chronicle of the tribes is not only a beautiful rendering, but an important photographic history of this integral niche of New Orleans history.” – Patricia Duffey Produced by online publisher Blurb.com.
Bio:
Christopher Porché West documents the cultural life of New Orleans including jazz, Mardi Gras Indians, African-American subjects and local color portraiture. His photographs are often displayed in one-of-a-kind assemblage-like artwork frames, which he crafts from salvaged architectural materials, cypress woods and other found objects to form sanctuaries around the images. He is available for gallery visits and assignment work. Porche West’s work captures the subtle, more solemn spirit of the city – the sense of strength, joy and resilience that sustains the city and her people.
New Orleans A to Z
New Orleans A to Z started as a personal project for photographer Jennifer Zdon’s daughter. Wanting to give her new baby a vibrant alphabet book to teach her about the unique city where she was born, Zdon began photographing miniatures of local cultural icons, developing still life depictions for each letter using selective focus and dreamy hues. This whimsical book is a love letter to the Crescent City and perfect for anyone who is proud to call NOLA home.
Bio: Jennifer Zdon is a documentary and editorial photographer whose passion is to portray moments that often go unnoticed, giving readers a peek behind closed doors, with a warm and compassionate touch. She is drawn to show the quirky and whimsical sides of a community, using photography to highlight the trials and joys of life. She has covered stories in South America, Europe and across the American South and contributed to the photo books “America 24/7,” “Louisiana 24/7” and “America at Home.” She is also a member of the staff at The Times-Picayune that won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for Hurricane Katrina coverage. Zdon has been a photographer for the newspaper since 1995.
