FRACTAL DREAMS:
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM TWO DECADES

Signed Trade Edition: $150

*Special Collector’s Edition:
Special Edition book and choice of original signed print (see below).
Roman Loranc introduces a singular vision to the West Coast photographic tradition as he expands its territory. Finding uncommon beauty in the fragile wetlands and ancient oaks of the Central Valley, as well as its rural back roads, hills and farms, Loranc’s exceptional prints make these subjects as memorable as famous views of Yosemite. Born in Easter Europe in 1956 and arriving in California in 1984, Loranc has injected a wealth of cultural tradition and emotion into his beautifully hand crafted photographs. In recent years, Loranc has returned to explore the surviving countryside and architecture of his Polish homeland, including the atmospheric interiors of its churches and synagogues.

Fractal Dreams presents the first twenty-year retrospective of Loranc’s images from both California and Europe, highlighting the unique lyricism and powerful drama of his bold photographic vision. His widely collected work is featured in museums and private collections an has appeared in numerous publications, including his acclaimed 2003 monograph, Two-Hearted Oak.

The essay by David Stroud, who lives and works in San Francisco, explores the important contribution Roman Loranc has made to the tradition of West Coast landscape photography as well as the biographical and artistic background that makes him a unique and original voice in the history of American photography.

Orders are now being taken for Roman’s new book, Fractal Dreams, published by Photography West Gallery and printed in the United States. The autographed and slip cased limited edition of the book comes with your choice of one of five original 9″ x 12″ photographs. Roman will be signing his new book at DeSantos Gallery on January 23rd at 5:30pm

To order a copy please contact Gemma DeSantos  at 713 520 1200.

View Roman’s Images

Artist Statement:
Some photographers believe their strongest work comes from exploring their immediate surroundings. “I think of myself as a regional photographer,” Loranc says, “but that does not mean the photography cannot be understood beyond the region. Right now people all over the United States indicate to me that regionalism, born of an informed attachment, has universal appeal.” Loranc shoots most of his pictures within an hour’s drive of his home in Modesto, California, but he is also interested in exploring his ancestral roots in Europe. For this reason he makes occasional photographic forays into Poland and Lithuania.

“I’m fascinated by the ancient churches of my homeland,” he says. “These are holy spaces where millions of people have prayed for hundreds of years. They are places of great humility, and remind us how brief our lives are. I feel the same way when I’m photographing ancient groves of native oaks in California. I was unconscious of this when I began, but upon reflection, I think the oaks are just as sacred as the old cathedrals of Europe. They are sacred in that they have survived for so many years. I’m aware that the native people of California held all living things as divine. For me a grove of Valley Oaks is as sacred as any church in Europe.”
“I think about how interconnected the world is,” Loranc says. “When I’m out on a crisp winter’s morning, shooting a stand of native oaks, I see oak galls hanging from the trees. These were once used to make the pyrogallol chemicals I use to develop my negatives. So the oak trees I am photographing played a part in the developer I use to process my negatives of those trees. It is healthy to remember that we are often linked to the natural world in ways we don’t even suspect.”

DeSantos Gallery

1724 Richmond Ave.

Houston, TX  77098

info@desantosgallery.com

NEW EXHIBITION AT DESANTOS GALLERY

New Work from Artist Cara Barer Makes Big Impression on the West Coast, Now coming to Houston.

HOUSTON, TX – Exciting new work entitled “Becoming a Myth” from Houston photographer, Cara Barer to be shown at DeSantos Gallery. The opening for the exhibition will be held on Saturday, November 7, 6-9 PM. The fascination with Barer’s new form of art photography continues to grow each year as she presents a new body of work about books.

Along with the book photographs in this exhibition, Barer will also present new mixed media sculptures created from the previously photographed books.  Barer has also cast one of these sculptures in bronze – a step in a different direction for her, but one that has opened a new door for the artist in her repertoire of mediums. Says Barer, ”I continue to experiment and find new ways to re-purpose books that no longer have a reason to exist. In this digital age of the 21^st century, I hope that people will consider the ephemeral way in which we choose to obtain knowledge, and the future of books.”

Barer’s work has crossed the boundaries of traditional photography, and ventures into unique territory by blurring the line between photography, book art, paper art, and sculpture. Her photographs have been featured in three new books about the many forms of paper art. “Perfect Paper,” published by Page One Publishing, in Singapore, “Papercraft,” published by Gestalten in Berlin, Germany, and also in “Paper, Tear, Fold, Rip, Crease, Cut,” by Black Dog Publishing in the UK.

In February, her new work was presented at the UCLA Book Fair by Susan Spiritus Gallery. After that, it was also shown in two group exhibitions this year in San Francisco at Andrea Schwartz Gallery, and in Los Angeles at Tarryn Teresa Gallery.  The Los Angeles exhibition, titled “Palimpsests,”recently received a positive review in the Los Angeles Times on October 9^th.

Her work is also being featured with Galerie Poller in the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany, October 13-18, 2009.

ABOUT CARA BARER

Cara Barer lives and work in Houston, TX.  She is represented by galleries nationwide, and also internationally in Toronto, Canada, and Frankfurt, Germany. Her photographs are in many collections, public and private. Her work has appeared on numerous book and magazine covers.

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Image Gallery & Bio

About the exhibition
The title Time after Diamonds refers at two series of works I have been working since late 2007 till now. The 8 photographs and the video screening are a selection from the series Offerings and Possessions and The Passage of Time.

Offerings and Possessions conceals about our desire to posses even material things or even people. As it usual in Del Castillo’s works, the reversible action of the reflection appears as looking for ”equilibrium.” In this case, the success of possession depends on the offer by oneself.

The Magpie, a woman completely covered by sea of pearls, a dress made of 12,000 pearls; in the photo a magpie invigilate the reclined woman.

The Anthill, photograph of a woman holding one bronze piece made by Del Castillo, in the shape of the anthill or respectively a human organ. The golden shine is the feeling of desperate desire that reminds us the tale of the Midas king.

The Garden, a woman blinded by a mirrored silver sheet, that reflects the photograph that she holds above her that reveal complicated state between what is shown as artificial and natural flowers, with the hands caught in the act of taking away the flowers while the same time it appear it is taking away body of the woman at the same time.

The Bed, a photograph is the key that links the evolution from the worry about materiality to the worry of eternity.

Del Castillo has built for this photograph, 33 ceramic skulls with golden glazed. Each of the crane shell is removed and filled red velvet cushion, making one bed once you have all of them together. The woman in the photograph is sleeping on top of this bed. As it happened with the ancient tribes that they gain the cranes of their enemies to preserve their powers, this woman sleeps on top of the cranes, that even they are not real ones; they give us the idea of death. She sleeps on top of one Vanitas as if the time doesn’t affect her.

Recorridos, a photograph made of various collages of maps where the artist has resided the last 10 years due to her art practice. One red line links all these places. This red line is actually one sculpture made by her that is one red layered cooper stair that runs around one wooden broom connected to a wooden dustpan.

In transit, a photograph taken directly inside one elevator, where one girl is levitating and the only part that connects her to the floor is her hair that is linked to a sand clock situated on the floor of the elevator.

Matryoshka is a work consists both an installation and a performance, breaking the boundaries between disciplines in art of theatre, visual art and music concerts.

The original idea was directed and created by Naia del Castillo, where she served producer, artistic director for the project and creator for all the visual elements of the piece, photographs, scenery, objects…

In collaboration with vocalist and performer Gunnlaug Thorvaldsdottir, who brought life to Matryoshka through her unique voice and performance.

Matryoshka emerges from an eternal circular movement; expresses life cycle of unstoppable fertility channeled this motion by a large powerful doll while act of defiance expresses in form of shelter, are concealed with half of the body hidden by hairs. Her feet are anchored and frozen however from her ankle to head is unrestraint and free for movement. The layered of different dresses bound her as she slowly releases and undresses like a Matryoshka doll, while the music and voice accompany this transition of unfolding. In a continuous destruction and reconstruction, we trespass the boundaries of concealment, growth, fullness, death and renaissance.

This exhibition is organized as part of the “La noche de Luna Llena festival” with the support of the The Museum of Contemporary Art Esteban Vicente in Segovia and Segovia 2016.

Publisher’s Description
‘In Drifting Away my intention is to draw attention to some of the victims of forced disappearances of the Colombian armed conflict. The project is a response to a number of press reports and news broadcasts which explain how the paramilitaries and the guerrillas torture people, mutilate them and make them disappear by throwing their bodies into a river. This is the source of the saying that the rivers of Colombia are the world’s largest graveyard.

I started by looking for clothing or objects belonging to people who had disappeared in Bogota, and then I went out to the areas of conflict in visits to Eastern Antioquia, Caqueta and Medellin, amongst other places.During these macabre visits I was able to talk to the families of the victims, who are indeed the voice of all Colombia, clamoring not only for the respect for life, but also for the right to be able to be able to bury their dead.

From a technical point of view, I decided to represent the idea of the river literally, submerging the clothing or objects in water, in order to highlight the way in which the turbulence of water is also a leading feature of the image. Ialso decided to pring on glass to give the feeling of ethereal and fragility character of the image – and so therefore, of life in those parts of our country.’ – Erika Diettes

In a limited edition of 250 signed and numbered copies.

Hardbound $250.00

The book features an introduction in English and Spanish by renowned Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, recounting the childhood memories of his first corrida de toros, while also reflecting upon his personal philosophy on the contemporary bullfight.

International Photography Awards 2008
First Place in Book – Fine Art Category

Los Toros by Michael Crouser
First Edition Signed Copy $ 60.00

The land of Tuscany has nurtured and inspired artists for centuries. In Tuscany: Wandering the Back Roads, Volume I, by Paula Chamlee, and Volume II, by Michael A. Smith, the glorious tradition continues and is even enhanced in their deeply personal and beautiful photographs of one of the most alluring and romantic places in the world.

In the spring of 1999 and 2000, and in the fall of 2001, the photographers Michael A. Smith and Paula Chamlee shipped their old Land Rover to Europe, after configuring it to accommodate their large-format camera equipment and camping gear. They then drove to Italy, where they traveled together, yet worked separately while exploring the landscape and the small towns and villages of Tuscany—each recording their own visual responses to a land they had come to love.

During their travels and adventures, Smith and Chamlee photographed from the quarries in the Carrara region in the north to the old Etruscan towns in the south, and from the Val di Chiana and Cortona in the east to the Island of Elba off the coast to the west. Their photographs, full of warmth and life, yet demanding in their complex visual elements, are the culmination of those three extensive trips. Selections from each of the photographers are here collected in this extraordinary two-volume set of books.

Chamlee’s 8 x 10, 5 x 7, and 4 x 5-inch photographs are presented in Volume I, along with an essay by the noted Curator of Photography, Robert Sobieszek, a foreword by the well-known writer, Ferenc Máté, and a preface by the photographers. Volume II is a long-format book and contains Smith’s 8 x 20-inch photographs.

To insure the exacting standards that are a hallmark of Lodima Press, every detail in the production of these exquisite books was supervised by the photographers. The reproductions of the photographs, in 600-line screen quadtone and printed on heavy coated stock by Salto2 in Belgium, achieve unmatched fidelity to the original prints. Sturdy French-fold dust jackets protect and complete the elegant production of these fine books.

Publisher: Lodima Press

First Edition Signed Copy Price $ 95.00

Germán Herrera (b. Mexico City, 1957) has had a long career as a photographer, working in both the tradition of the street photographer and as a constructor of symbolic images. The works on exhibition here, produced since 2001, represent an artist who has established a mature, richly eloquent voice. Using digital technology he merges images of an array of common and enigmatic objects, natural elements, historic references, and textures and atmospheres. In doing so, he conjures a world that is at once wholly real and imagined – a chronicle of the subconscious. Many photographers working with the formats of constructed imagery or photomontage do so with a keen sense of intentionality, as a means of conveying a specific statement or idea. Herrera, in contrast, relies greatly on intuition and emotion, more interested in the possibility of locating meaning outside the arenas or pure intellect and reason.

Herrera has spoken of this body of work as a “book of self,” an expression of the totality of the beliefs, feelings, fears, and myths that reside within him. But in evoking a personal sphere he ultimately creates spaces for the contemplation of the universal. Each image functions as a kind of mirror that offers the potential to recognize something of ourselves; distinct interpretations or memories may be sparked for each viewer. Many of these works have an oneiric quality, as if envisioning fragments (a face or limb, a weathered surface, an old artwork) recalled from dreams but that remain tantalizingly beyond full comprehension. With his resonant mode of image-making, Herrera suggests that these ambiguous forms, and such realms as discontinuity, transience, obscurity, and even emptiness, may be fertile ground for creative transformation. In Herrera’s hands, photography becomes a medium for entering liminal spaces – between the physical and the psychological, the knowable and the unknowable – elusive territories that symbolize the possibility of grasping the metaphysical in the everyday world around us.

Elizabeth Ferrer © 2009

Visit German Herrera Website