Curator and gallery
owner Debra Brehmer began the project in January with the help of Manitowoc’s nationally
known photographic team, John Shimon and Julie Lindemann. Portrait Society put
out a call that anyone who desired to have their portrait included in the
project could drive to the photographers’ historic home studio and have their
picture taken in vintage 1900s style. No one wears a smile in these prints,
though the photographers encouraged individuals to wear clothing or hold
objects that would reveal their unique personalities.
The palladium
postcard portraits will be displayed in the Portrait Society’s Gallery A. All
of the photographs will be housed in cherry wood cases funded by Lawrence University, where Shimon and Lindemann
teach. To complement the new photographs, the exhibit pairs actual
early-20th-century photographs with 2010 counterparts.
This exhibit will
make viewers “think about what it means to be who you are, in front of the
camera, in that intimate moment of time,” Brehmer says. “The photographs
collaborate with art, community and two centuries.”
To magnify the
process, Shimon and Lindemann will also print color portraits on life-size
canvases for an adjacent smaller gallery.
In an effort to
incorporate an international element to the exhibition, Gallery B will feature
the work of award-winning London
photographer Vanessa Winship in “Dancers and Fighters.”
Winship’s
black-and-white portraits use modern photography to depict Turkish children,
boxers, dancers and wrestlers in a style similar to that of Shimon and
Lindemann’s exhibit. Brehmer says that every photograph relates to “the little
things that happen between the space and the photographer’s camera, giving us
an idea of who we are today.”
The complete
collection of postcard portraits will be mounted for the first time at Friday’s
6-10 p.m. opening reception (catalogs will also be made available to the
public).
Brehmer says she
plans these adventurous exhibitions to showcase the portrait genre. “The
exhibition is the perfect example of what the gallery can do, a more active
process, personal, thoughtful and thought-provoking,” she notes.
(For a sneak peek of “J. Shimon and J. Lindemann: The Real Photo Postcard Survey Project,” visit realphotopostcardsurveyproject.blogspot.com.)
*/?>
