Media are invited to attend the opening reception, Friday, June 1, 2007, from 6-8 p.m.
Exhibition Dates: June 1 - July 2, 2007
New York University’s Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts will present a new series of approximately 12 color photographs by alumna Samantha Contis. The artist is the 2006 recipient of the Tierney Family Foundation Grant, which was established in 2005 to encourage photographers to continue to develop as artists after graduation and to enhance their creative capabilities.
The exhibition will open June 1 and remain on view through July 2, 2007. (An opening reception will be June 1, 2007 from 6-8 pm.) The show is installed in the Gulf + Western Gallery (rear of lobby) located at 721 Broadway. Gallery hours are 10 am through 7 pm weekdays, and noon to 5 pm Saturdays. Admission is free. A photo ID is required for entry to the building. For further information, please call 212.998.1930, or visit www.photo.tisch.nyu.edu.
Samantha Contis’ photographs are set in and around her hometown in rural Pennsylvania and her current residence in Connecticut. According to Contis, the photographs speak of the ever-evolving notion of place. “The void depicted (sometimes literally) in the photographs evokes a bleak melancholy that is at odds with the ‘picture perfect’ beauty of the landscapes,” says Contis. “And the images explore the divide between our imaginings of a place and the actuality of the place itself. Through the passing of seasons, years, and other inescapable cycles, the photographs reveal the lingering feelings of expectations left unfulfilled.”
The spare-looking images can be said to be simple and reductive, and give way to a sweeping view of the pastoral landscape where specificity comes in tiny details - tiny robins under a single towering tree, two empty ladders, a bare tree on an island of ice, a pair of geese resting beside a perfectly round pond, and a lone silo hidden behind an immense pine.
Samantha Contis, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1982, received her BFA in Photography & Imaging and Art History from NYU in 2004. She was selected by Art + Commerce as one of eleven emerging photographers worldwide for PEEK2007. Her work will be published in Capricious magazine, October 2007. She is currently enrolled in the MFA program in photography at Yale University.
The Department of Photography and Imaging is an intensive four-year BFA program centered on the making and understanding of images. It is a diverse department embracing multiple perspectives. The students work in virtually all modes of analog, digital, and multimedia photo-based image making, exploring photo-based imagery as personal and cultural expression. For further information on the department, please visit our website, www.photo.tisch.nyu.edu.