(Pictured above: Long Island Sound by Bree Lamb)

REMEMBER ME

ŸŸBree Lamb + Anne Leighton Massoni

March 4 – April 15, 2017

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 4, 2017, 6 – 9pm

Location: Colorado Photographic Arts Center (1070 Bannock St, Denver, CO 80204)

“What served in place of the photograph, before the camera’s invention? The expected answer is the engraving, the drawing, the painting. The more revealing answer might be: memory. What photographs do out there in space was previously done within reflection.”
– John Berger, About Looking

Presented by the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Remember Me is a fascinating exploration of the elusiveness of memory by two artists that use photography in unexpected, innovative ways.

From her series Volley, Bree Lamb’s massive, pastel prints draw in viewers, only to repel them with visually disorienting patterns – a technique Lamb uses “to communicate the inherent disconnect between experience, representation, and memory.” That disconnect was palpable for Lamb while looking at faded snapshots from her childhood. “I am able to identify events in family snapshots, but I do not recall the actual experiences,” she writes. “In this sense the photographs inform my childhood identity no matter how detached I feel from the experiences themselves.” By overlaying color fields and silhouettes onto those images, she deliberately disrupts “any familiarity or intimacy commonly associated with the personal snapshot.”

Anne Leighton Massoni juxtaposes found photographs and her own images to visualize a place she describes as “between truth and fiction” in her series Holding. Each diptych shows an image she created of an empty place next to a found photograph of a time that no longer exists. She then paints a thin line to connect them. “The line, like a strand of DNA, ties the images, separated by generations, to one another. The line is often initiated in the found photograph by pointing to the senses – taste, smell, touch, sound – to a point in the contemporary image that speaks to the residues left behind by current or past inhabitants,” she writes.

“Remember Me showcases just how versatile photography has become, and how artists are using it in new ways to explore familiar ideas,” said Samantha Johnston, Executive Director of CPAC. Johnston was also drawn to the contrasts between Lamb’s and Massoni’s work. “While both artists address ideas surrounding memory, its elusiveness, and nostalgia for the past, their approaches are wildly different in terms of size, color, and technique,” she said.

This show is one of three exhibitions the Colorado Photographic Arts Center is producing during Month of Photography 2017, a biannual celebration of fine art photography in Denver in March and April with hundreds of events throughout the region.

ABOUT BREE LAMB | breelamb.com

Bree Lamb is a working artist and photographer based in New Mexico. She received her MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico. She is a Beaumont Newhall/Van Deren Coke Fellow and is represented by Gallery 19 in Chicago. Bree is Assistant Editor at Fraction Magazine and Part-Time Faculty at New Mexico State University. Bree has previously worked for Wildenstein & Company, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Fovea Exhibitions, and photo technique Magazine.

ABOUT ANNE LEIGHTON MASSONI | anneleightonmassoni.com

Anne Leighton Massoni, is the Program Director of Photography at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Massoni graduated with an MFA in Photography from Ohio University and BAs in Photography and Anthropology from Connecticut College. She has exhibited nationally and internationally including the H. F. Johnson Museum in New York, The Print Center in Philadelphia, NIH in Washington, DC, Rayko in San Francisco, the East End Film Festival in London, England, the 2013 International Mobile Innovation Screening in New Zealand and Australia, and IlCantinonearte Teatri e Galleria del Grifo in Montepulciano, Italy. She serves as the Vice Chair of the National Board of the Society for Photographic Education.