October 6, 2011

Snap Happy !
Atlanta Celebrates Photography (ACP) hosts a month of photoperfect events in our fair city
By Nancy Staab

From Dorothy OConnors dreamy installation art to celeb shooter Martin Schoeller, Atlanta is papered in arresting photo images all month long. Here are the highlights.

ACP HIGHLIGHTS 2011

All events free and open to public unless otherwise noted. For more information visit ACPinfo.org Oct. 4-Nov. 1 SCAD-Atlantahosts a special exhibit of white-hot, international artist Marina Abramovics works. The exhibit includes three of her videos and an iconic series of her photos. Reception Oct. 20 at 6:30PM

Oct. 6 Known for his unflinching, see-every-freckle, extreme close-ups of celebs (clients include Jack Nicholson, Angelina Jolie and Cate Blanchett, to name a few), Martin Schoeller takes to the lecture podium at SCAD-Atlanta at 6:30 PM. Schoeller cut his teeth as the former assistant to Annie Leibovits and has created arresting covers for glossy mags like Rolling Stone, GQ and Esquire. Oct. 8 Local photographer Dorothy OConnor creates dreamy tableaux of sleeping and waking beauties posed in surreal nature-inflected scenes and then photographs them as the final relic. For this night only OConnor opens up her studio so viewers can actually see one of her tableau vivants with a live model in real time, from 7:30 to 10PM at her studio at 1371 Fairbanks Street, Atlanta, GA, 30310.

Oct. 8 Local artist Monica Cook takes her claymation/video art public at PB&J Gallery in Atlantic Station on Oct. 8 and then reprises her show Oct. 21 at Goat Farm and Oct. 29 at Grant Park. Cooks eerie stop-motion/Claymation video is sound activated, thus implicating the audience in the narratives. This particular work, featuring anthropomorphic monkeys, explores human/animal interface Oct. 13 Curator of the International Center of Photography in New York, Christopher Phillips, will lecture on Recent Experimental Photography And Video in China by top contemporary artists like Cao Fei and Wang Quingsong, at 7PM at SCAD-Atlanta. Oct. 27 Emerging photographer Zoe Strauss lectures at the ACAC at 7PM, Strauss is a photographer/installation artist, who uses the gritty underbelly of Philadelphia and its denizens as the subjects of her work. Think: trannys, weathered elderly ladies, prostitutes and people on the margins. She also shows her work annually at her famous Under I-95 show, held beneath the interstate highway in South Philly, where she sells photocopies prints of her works for $5. Strauss work was included in the prestigious 2006 Whitney Biennial. Oct. 28 Noted San Francisco-based commercial/editorial photographer Timothy Archibald, whose photographic calling card is wry, subversive humor, trains his eye on a more tender subject---his fiveyear-old Autistic son Eli. Without losing his edge, Archibald forges collaborative, imaginative portraits of Eli that provide a window into his word. Archibald will lecture at the Emory University School of Medicine at 7PM. Nov. 2 Art Papers presents the inaugural Art Papers Live lecture at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art at 5:30PM. Featured speaker is international photographer Zineb Sedira. The London-based, French/Algerian shutterbug was exhibited this summer at the Venice Bienniale and his thought-provoking works enlist images and texts to explore migration and globalization. The lecture series is the brainchild of Art Papers Editor-in-Chief Sylvie Fortin--a lecture program she will soon take on the road. And Dont Miss: Sally Manns latest meditations on mortality at Jackson Fine Art; Echoes of the Sublime curated by Stephanie Dowda at Emily Amy Gallery; Hagedorn Foundation Gallerys exhibit of new, digital envelope-pushers; Spelman 15th anniversary acquisitions show; Michael M. Koehlers evocative street scenes at Get This! Gallery; Jerry Siegels series on the eccentric Geraldine at Barbara Archer; Brett Abbott Selects: Photos from Moca GAs Collection at MOCA-GA starting Oct. 1, Twirl by Charlie McCullers at Bee boutique in Buckhead beginning Oct. 1 and Steel Toes at Atlanta Ballets new studios in Westside Oct. 15-16, The Dog Park Photographs by Meg Dreyer Oct. 20 Nov. 6 at her studio, and arresting new work by Jody Fausett at Whitespace Oct. 21-Nov. 26. All events free and open to public unless otherwise noted. For more information visit ACPinfo.org