If you’ve been on the Downtown Mall recently, you probably already know that the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph returns from its off year this week, with a string of events across town that celebrate that which is worth 1,000 words: the photograph. The festival’s broad theme, “Home,” is fitting for the husband-wife duo Kathy Ryan (of The New York Times Magazine) and Scott Thode. To make you feel like you’re at home in the schedule, here are a few sure bets. For a complete run-down, including talks, parties and workshops, visit www.look3.org.
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Photographer Mary Ellen Mark and filmmaker Martin Bell turned a three-year project documenting high school proms, including Charlottesville High School’s, into a film called PROM, which screens Friday at The Paramount Theater. |
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First impressions
The World Press Photo exhibit has its North American premiere, collecting the year’s best photojournalism in an easy-to-swallow gallery walk. Its photos—of the Haiti earthquake, the Mexican drug war, victims of Agent Orange—put a face to the defining events of our day. One such face can be seen in a photo that took World Press Photo’s top prize: Jodi Bieber’s matter-of-fact portrait of Bibi Aisha, an 18-year-old Afghan woman whose nose and ears were cut off by Taliban fighters after she fled the abusive husband she was married to upon reaching puberty. (On view through June 26 at McGuffey Art Center, 201 Second St. NW. Opening reception: Thursday, June 9, 5-6pm.)
On and on
Full festival passes were sold out days before the festival started. Mercifully, local galleries host work by some of photography’s superstars free of charge throughout the month. The three to see are this year’s INsight Artists: Second Street Gallery hosts work by Nan Goldin, the New York- and Paris-based photographer whose “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” helped set the aesthetic tone for the 1980s. Chroma is showing “Natural Habitats,” distant, bemused shots of people at leisure by Massimo Vitali that match anthropology with a page torn from Where’s Waldo. The Czech-born American photographer Antonin Kratochvil’s work, “Dominova: Homeland” shows at 306 E. Main St. (The entrance is next to the C-VILLE office and Bank of America ATM.) Kratochvil calls the show a therapeutic photographic journey to the homeland from which he was exiled. (Check out the Galleries section on page 39 for listings.)
Bad dreams
Poignantly placed across from the Free Speech Wall on the Downtown Mall is a thoughtful look at the cost of war, through the lens of Australian-born photographer Ashley Gilbertson. For “Bedrooms of the Fallen,” Gilbertson traveled to the homes of American soldiers killed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Each photograph is accompanied by a short sentence that details the soldier’s hometown and the circumstances of his or her death. But in the images, the soldiers’ lives are fleshed out by the rich detail of the books and movies they enjoyed in life, the sheets they slept in, the sunglasses they wore and more. The exhibit is up through the month, and well worth a stop. (At the east end of the Downtown Mall through July 10.)
Formal attire
In 2008, a C-VILLE writer went on an unusual assignment: to the Charlottesville High School senior prom. Photographer Mary Ellen Mark was there to continue a three-year project capturing images of students on the big night, wearing the nicest outfits they’ve ever worn. While some local students might like to forget the evening, Mark and the filmmaker Martin Bell return this year to screen a film, PROM, that documents their adventure through 10 states, including imagery from Charlottesville’s prom. (PROM screens Friday, June 10, noon-1pm, at The Paramount Theater.)
Beginners
The Festival of the Photograph has distinguished each year with its advocacy for young and emerging photographers. This year the fest reprises its “Shots” and “Works” evenings, featuring large-scale projections of works-in-progress by up-and-coming fine art photographers and photojournalists. A sample: “Shots” opens on Friday night with Kendall Messick’s “The Projectionist,” a photo essay about an elderly man who resurrected the golden age of cinema by building a tiny cinema palace in his basement. Saturday’s “Works” ends with Jacob Krupnick’s project “Girl Walk // All Day,” which Krupnick describes as “an epic, 71-minute dance music video set to All Day, the new album by mash-up musician Girl Talk.” Also featured: a slideshow of images of Charlottesville by locals. (“Shots” is free, on Friday, June 10, 9-11pm at the nTelos Wireless Pavilion; admission is $10 for “Works,” Saturday from 9-11pm at the Pavilion.)