Callen McJunkin Gallery

An exhibition showcasing five innovative photographers: Stephen Lawson, Robert W. Schramm, F. Brian Ferguson, Brittain McJunkin and Alison Overton. This exhibition presents work that employs highly inventive photographic processes -- from Daguerreotype to digital -- that span more than a century. 

The clear light of winter is conducive to the study of photography, as is winter's contemplative, unhurried mood.  The artists in this exhibition present works that employ highly varied photographic processes -- from Daguerreotype to digital -- that span more than a century. Their work has both conceptual and romantic expressions, and demonstrates the ability of the artists to capture frozen moments in time, frozen glances, and frozen expressions of people and places. Each of these artists has successfully captured these moments in a variety of unique photographic processes allowing the viewer the chance to see the world through their lenses. The breadth of experience of the artists is vast: though all but one reside in West Virginia, they have not only used the West Virginia landscape as their backdrop but they have traveled beyond nationally and internationally to use the world stage as well.

Stephen Lawson, who has gained national and international exposure for his work, came to West Virginia from Scotland over 25 years ago with the intention of creating 'earth works', art that uses the actual landscape as its physical medium. But Lawson's focus changed once here. Instead of digging holes and felling trees, his attention was drawn towards conservation, and he consequently developed a non- intrusive means of working in and with the landscape. With his background in sculpture, he began to build his unique cameras to capture his time-based works. These cameras have taken years to develop and construct, one exploration leading to the realization of the next.

Stephen Lawson's work is presented in a poetic mode that preserves the flow of time in one image that could be likened to a movie still. His works are as frozen glances captured before the mind has the chance to shape the images into a visual memory. Lawson has earned national recognition for his photographic images, and is included (along with other esteemed photographers) in a National Geographic Society publication titled Landscape. He has been included internationally in publications for the Scottish National Gallery's Photography Collection and in the Gaelic Arts Agency, Edinburgh Scotland Canongate Books, The Great Book of Gaelic. Stephen Lawson is an award-winning artist that has been included in exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad.

Robert W. Schramm is a West Virginia artist and Professor Emeritus of Physics and retired Senior Lecturer in Art from the West Liberty State College, where he taught photography to both science majors and art majors. In the last 20 years he has been specializing in 19 th Century photographic processes such as daguerreotypes, platinotypes, chrysotypes and uranotypes. The artist states that he is one of a fairly small group of daguerreotypists in the world (about 20-25) and one of only 5 or 6 photographers actively making chrysotypes.

Robert W. Schramm is the only known photographer making uranotypes today. The use of these antique processes gives the artist the means to create these impressionistic and pictorial images. His work is based on modern day scenes yet feel as though the viewer has stepped back in time by about 100 years. His work evokes a lyrical romanticism and depicts imagery shot all over the world from Paris, France to Venice, Italy.

West Virginia artist F. Brian Ferguson is probably best known for his photojournalist work in the Charleston Gazette. This award -winning artist, using his camera to capture relationships between people and places, could be viewed as a modern day storyteller. Recently featured in the book American 24/7 created by Rick Smolan and David Elliot Cohen, the artist was selected among thousands of photographers across the country.

The book is described as an American time capsule, an epic project that includes the talent of photographers from all over the country selected to provide a pictorial representation of their home state. Ferguson's photographs were selected to represent West Virginia. Perhaps more than any other West Virginia photographer, Ferguson is preoccupied with ".the mountain people and mentality that have defined West Virginia" over the past 150 years. Ferguson's photography has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Harper's Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, The Sun, Antietam Review, and Shots Magazine . .

Brittain McJunkin is a West Virginia artist/physician using the camera as a means to evaluate various subjects, as in freezing a moment where light casts compelling shadows across surfaces like walls, buildings, landscapes, and dilapidated structures. Interesting textural abstract compositions are created, breathing new life and new perspective into once forgotten structures. McJunkin, whose work has been included in numerous State Juried Exhibitions, Exhibition 280, and most recently in Appalachian Corridors, also explores human relationships in his work.

From an image depicting a private, intimate conversation between a young man and woman on a crowded subway, to an elderly couple passing in front of a mural depicting an old Studebaker, or to a man sitting alone at a diner counter staring intently back at the photographer, McJunkin's experience as a physician may enhance his understanding and perception of the human being.

Alison Overton is an award winning artist from Raleigh, North Carolina who has been making art for over 20 years, chronicling moments in an ever changing architectural landscape that has taken her to places all over the world in order to document them. In her artist statement, she explains how she strives to constantly explore and expand her definition of the unique and mysterious in life and nature. She captures images that have an ethereal and timeless quality.

Reoccurring themes in her work deal with the sense of spiritual history found in the architectural landscape. By overlapping exposures, careful cropping and hand tinting, Overton's finished images reveal her fantasy of these places as they might appear to her on another plane of existence, that is, if our rules of time, space and perspective did not apply.

Through all of the artists' experiences with the differing possibilities of the photographic medium, the one tie that binds them all together in this exhibition is their use of the fourth dimension of time used in their two-dimensional photographs. "Freeze-Frame: The Photographers' Eye" is an exhibition that explores all of these artists' ability to freeze a moment, a glance, people and places, and even dreams in time. The gallery is pleased to present this opportunity to focus on the medium of photography, and to display a selection of some of West Virginia's finest photographers all together for the first time.
 
Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 10am - 5pm, and anytime by appointment. Please call the gallery at 304 342-5647, or email us at art@mcjunkingallery.com for further information.