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Email PageMother of Pearls (Vintage gelatin silver photographs: 1960s & 70s)
October 30, 2007- November 24, 2007
Reception: November 1, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
William Giles
Fotosphere
511 W 25th St William Giles Sand Dunes: White Sand, NM (1973) |
FOTOSPHERE GALLERY is pleased to announce the first New York exhibition of “Mother of Pearls,” a suite of 18 luminous black and white prints by the legendary West Coast photographer, William Giles. Based for the last 18 years in the Carmel – Monterey area of California that was home to Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, Giles inherits and extends their classical tradition. He brings a spiritual depth and contemporary graphic sensibility to his powerful, passionate images of nature.
The Los Angeles Times described Giles' photographs as “rarefied” and “magical” and it is evident that an extraordinary emotional and psychological force underlies their content. Crediting Minor White as a mentor, Giles acknowledges that the famed teacher/photographer pointed him towards a spiritual approach to the medium.
Giles' dramatic use of light and shadow animates still objects such as in a breathtakingly beautiful rendering of ridged sand dunes and water splash. In his portrayal of a screech owl about to take flight, its wings spread from corner to corner of the frame against a bottomless black background, the creature hovers with the force of an avenging angel. “Light emanates from objects proportional to the intensity and clarity of one’s own vision,” he says. Giles uses a 4x5 view camera and his exquisitely printed images are alive with vibrant blacks and rich detail.
William Giles’ photographs are in many collections and exhibitions including those of the Museums of Modern Art in New York and San Francisco, The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. In June, a selection of his work dating from the early 1950’s to the present was shown at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, California.
William Giles was born in 1934 and spent his childhood in London, Johannesburg and Buenos Aires. His mother, a concert pianist and his father, a surgeon, instilled in him an early regard for the special qualities of light, a lesson that has informed his work and his life. Having put himself through Cornell by operating his own portrait studio, he would later meet W. Eugene Smith who inspired him to take up photojournalism and cover the civil rights movement. Another famous photographer was responsible for a turn in his career when Dorothea Lange encouraged him to enroll at Rochester Institute of Technology. There he came under the influence of Nathan Lyons, Ralph Hattersley, the historian Beaumont Newhall and especially Minor White. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Rochester and subsequently founded the University’s Department of Photography where he taught from 1960 to 1972 and was appointed Chairman in 1965. -Text by Julia Scully-
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Fotosphere was last updated: 2009-01-09
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