The Long Beach Creative Group invites the community to Before & After: Photographic Transformation. The exhibition opens with a reception on June 21 The exhibition runs through July 25.
The exhibition is curated by LBCG Board Member Kay Erickson, and explores photographic manipulation. Since the discovery of the photographic process in the 1800s, artists have been using a wide variety of processes to alter, enhance, and otherwise manipulate images, often creating surreal, abstract, and otherworldly prints. Techniques included retouching with ink, airbrushing, and even cutting negatives and piecing them together to create new compositions.
Digital image processing got its start in the 1960s, with Bell Labs, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology leading the research, often attempting to improve wire-photo conversion, and to create detailed topographic maps of the lunar surface with photos taken by satellite.
“Today, complex image processing can be done on one’s cell phone with a few free apps,” Erickson observed. “This has opened up the possibility for anyone to tap into photographic creativity that was previously unattainable.”
Featured artists will include Samuel Brantley, Richard Burritt, Nick Capito, Dennis Doran, Roderick Hamby, Louise Ivers, Hannah Justesen, Michol Loefler, John Montich, Scout, Jessica Seville, Martha Spelman, Pia Williams, Maureen Vastardis, Lauren Zack, and Sarah Zhang.
Special Events:
Workshop:
On July 12, from 2 to 4 p.m., we will be hosting a photo alteration workshop, which is free and open to all ages. Participants will explore ways to alter a photograph, including cutting and pasting, adding color, and drawing. Art supplies will be provided, including color markers, magazine photos, black and white printed photos, scissors, glue, and paper. NOTE: Please bring a photo, printed or original, that you would like to alter and take home with you.
Movie Night:
Masters of Photography – Edward Steichen (1964)
7:30 p.m., July 17
Free
Synopsis: Widely regarded as the most influential photographer of the 20th century, he was born Eduard Jean Steichen in Luxenberg 1879. He worked in every aspect of the art fashion, industrial, nature, combat, portrait and tabletop photography. As the leading curator of the New York Museum of Modern Art he created the famous “Family of Man” photography exposition in 1955. In every branch of photography up to which he laid his hand he became a master. His portraits of Gershwin, Garbo, Eugene O’Neill, Marlene Dietrich, Chaplin and George M. Cohan are the definitive images by which we remember those celebrated artists. His photomurals of dams, bridges and huge buildings astonished audiences when they were first shown. In the 1920’s and 30’s he was the best known and most expensive commercial advertising photographer in New York City. A pioneer an aerial photography, during War War Two he was in charge of Naval combat camera crews. At age of 86 he reflected on his long life and and many achievements. “Photography” he said “is both ridiculously easy and impossibly difficult.”
Regular Rod Briggs Gallery hours are 1 to 4 p.m., Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays during the run of the show.
Time: 1 to 4 p.m., June 21
Cost: Free
Details: LongBeachCreativeGroup.org
Venue: Rod Briggs Gallery, 2221 E Broadway in Long Beach