Five area photographers offer their personal interpretations of the Eastern Oregon landscape in an exhibit at the Art Gallery at Linn-Benton Community College during the month of January.
“Five Photographers: Perspectives on Eastern Oregon” explores how the same subject is perceived through different eyes. The show, which contains more than 60 prints in various photographic media, will be on view from Jan. 3-28, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. A public reception will be held at the gallery on Thursday, Jan. 20 from 6:30 to 8 p.m.
Photographers Owen Bentley, Rich Bergeman and Allan Doerksen, all of Corvallis; and Kurt Norlin and Bob Ross, both of Albany, have been traveling together and separately to various locations in Eastern Oregon over the past several years. The show includes scenes from Steens Mountain, Summer Lake, the Painted Hills, Catlow Valley, Malheur Refuge, Harney Basin, Warner Valley and the Alvord Desert, among others.
Although they sometimes photographed in exactly the same places, such as the abanonded Shirk Ranch at Guano Lake, the petroglyphs at the base of Hart Mountain, and the rustic town of Hardman, they came back with different views that interpret their subjects in their own personal styles.
Doerksen and Bergeman offer classic black-and-white studies of weathered wood-plank buildings, abandoned interiors and other scenes taken with large-format cameras. While Doerksen uses the traditional silver-gelatin papers to print his work, Bergeman prints in the historic platinum process and also shows some small manipulated color Polaroid prints.
Ross, a well-known nature photograher, presents color photographs made with a digital camera. His work reveals a fascination with the land and a wide-ranging interest in subject matter, from aerials to closeup details.
Norlin is showing two distinct styles of work–a selection of panoramic color prints that reveal the breadth of the Eastern Oregon landscape, and a set of photographs made with a toy camera, whose soft focus and distortion add a dream-like quality to the images.
Bentley presents large-format black-and-white prints that find the ironic and playful in the small towns and deserted homesteads that dot the desert landscape.
The LBCC Art Gallery is located in the AHSS Building on the main Albany campus, and is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. For more information, contact the gallery at 917-4530.