“Graphicacy”

January 10 – February 5

Three photographers will be featured through February 5 in Chroma Fine Art Gallery’s new exhibition, Graphicacy. The artists – Rita Baunok, Bruce Dunbar and Carly Goldstein – reflect a range of photographic practices and modes of creating and contextualizing visual form. The word graphicacy refers to the ability to understand information presented in non-textual formats, like sketches, photographs, diagrams, maps, graphs, plans, and charts. Graphicacy is the visual equivalent of the word literacy.

On view are photographs from Rita Baunok’s 2016 series, La Esperanza. The project spans time and emotional space to recover fragments that tell the story of a family and a home. Though the narrative is fictional, Baunok amassed thousands of poignant, documentary-style images to evoke themes of love, loss, displacement, sorrow, union and hope.

Bruce Dunbar is a master at pushing the boundaries of experimental photography to poetic effect. His minimal compositions have soft tonalities and a depth of atmosphere. Dunbar captures impressions of fleeting natural phenomena. Whether mapping the path of the sun in the sky, or responding to the elegant silhouette of a native flower, Dunbar’s work has a rich, magical quality. The works on display include cyanotypes, a photographic printing process that uses sunlight and chemical paper.

Carly Goldstein is an emerging, lens-based artist who recently graduated from Parsons School of Design. She employs a crisp documentary style to isolate scenes that might otherwise be overlooked. Goldstein is inspired by archival images, as well as the timeless quality of film stills. She frames moments that simultaneously compress and expand time – seeming to express a sense of living nostalgia. Her lens focuses on the accumulated layers of the past that give a place soul and presence.

Artists:
Rita Baunok
Bruce Dunbar
Carly Goldstein