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Email PageLittle Grace Chapel – Spirit of the Road
April 5, 2007- May 12, 2007
Reception: April 5, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Ports Bishop
PH Gallery
547 W 27th StPH Gallery is pleased to present Little Grace Chapel –Spirit of the Road, an exhibition of photographs by Ports Bishop.
Over the course of two years, Ports took a series of portraits and landscapes surrounding the area where Kris Tackitt, the chaplain of the Little Grace Chapel, ministers to truckers riding the highways and byways of Central Pennsylvania. In Ports’ photographs, there is always only one figure in each frame, creating a deceptively simple composition.
Little Grace Chapel –Spirit of the Road documents, in a more or less traditional manner, the small nomadic community and hints at the way the chapel functions as an anchor with the most anchorless of people.
Ports’ eye seems to make these individuals into almost sacred figures, buried in a very familiar, contemporary American setting. One photo shows a man with a long silvery beard looking out the window and exposing his face to the sunlight in the Chapel trailer. The way his body emerges from the darkness toward the light evokes Rembrandt’s paintings, and the soft sunlight on the kitschy bed mat beneath him, sprinkled with cartoonish planets and stars, makes him more human. The diffused light transforms the blue mat into a spiritual symbol, and the trucker, in a worn-out white T-shirt, into a loyal apostle.
This series of photographs tells a story, but each photo is whole and complete by itself. Ports depicts the individuals and their world using a simple visual language. Of utmost importance in these creations are color, pattern, and environment: the picture of Chaplain Kris in her black satin jacket, her fiery red hair blowing in the wind as she stands in front of a Shell gas station; the truck driver dressed like Moses standing on the massive and wet asphalt expanse criss-crossed with tire marks. All the images speak deeply to a part of the American identity.
Ports Bishop was born in 1976, grew up in Peterborough, New Hampshire and currently lives and works in New York. He was educated at Boston University, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and Rhode Island School of Design. He is a faculty member of The International Center of Photography. His first book, Future Friends, was published in 2005.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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PH Gallery was last updated: 2008-10-11
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