Art Hounds: Photography three ways
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As a manager of the Prairie Island Campground in Winona, Minn., Jamie Schell often directs guests to the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in town. The museum’s current photography exhibition, entitled Tony Duran: California, departs from the museum’s water-inspired artwork, but there’s another connection. Tony Duran is a Winona native who has forged a career photographing celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Sharon Stone and Beyoncé. The exhibit includes those portraits and dozens of others.
“I started thinking of Tony as an old-time mariner,” Schell said, reflecting on the exhibit’s landing at the Marine Art Museum. “They would go out into the world, see all these amazing, unbelievable things, then come home and probably have a hard time actually explaining them to folks.”
Duran dedicated the exhibit, which runs through April 25, to his mother, who lives in town.
Photographer Sarah Sampedro appreciates both the backstory and the artistic goals of Melissa Borman’s photography exhibit “A Piece of Dust in the Great Sea of Matter.” Sampedro said that several years ago, Borman suffered an injury that limited her mobility for a year. Stuck inside, the photographer perused images of outdoor spaces, only to note how often female bodies were treated as objects or passive scenery in landscape photography.
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After recovering, Borman invited friends to join her for outside photography sessions. Each person chose what they would wear, where they would be, and how they would interact with the natural world around them. In some photos, the person’s face is hidden, allowing Sampedro and other viewers to imagine themselves into the photo. In others, the person’s expression is an important part of the viewing experience.
Borman’s show is viewable at the Niche Gallery at Century College in White Bear Lake through March 9.
Minneapolis artist Jodi Reeb appreciates the photography exhibit of Steve Ozone’s work, “No Claim: Assimilation, Adaptation, and Integration,” at TractorWorks in Minneapolis. The photographs are of flowers and vegetables against a black background. Ozone is of Chinese and Japanese descent, and grew up in a predominantly white suburban town. His photographs of the Chinese vegetables, familiar in his boyhood home, explore the sense of difference he felt growing up.
Reeb calls the still life photographs “very simple and beautiful,” adding “against this black background, so you almost have a sense of reverence and special-ness coming through.”
The exhibit runs through April 21.
