Robert Turner Photography

Los Angeles Art Show – January 20-24, 2010

rtpAdmin — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 20:53:00 +0000

This year in the third week of January my work will be featured in the Susan Spiritus Gallery space at the Fine Art Dealers Association’s LOS ANGELES ART SHOW. It is a four day juried event that brings together 110 galleries, both domestic and international, exhibiting work from all genres and periods. It takes place in the Los Angeles Convention Center. Last year’s show brought in 35,000 visitors from all over the world.

Visit the Los Angeles Art Show website for details and background on the show, as well as the fair schedule, driving and parking instructions, ticket information, and a list of participating galleries.

Lecture at The G2 Gallery

rtpAdmin — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:15:52 +0000

During my exhibit RARE PLACES IN A RARE LIGHT at The G2 Gallery in Venice, California, I will give a lecture with projected images on Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 7:00 pm. I will offer insights into the art of capturing ephemeral images of beauty and drama in the natural world.

I’ll also share anecdotes on the circumstances that produced many of the pictures in the exhibit. There will be an emphasis on the process I have evolved for being in the right place at the right time, finding compositional structure in a chaotic visual environment, and getting nuances of light and color onto film. I’ll also discuss the obstacles that commonly keep beautiful sights from translating into satisfying photographs.

Throughout the talk, I’ll recount the formative experiences in nature and the visual arts that lead to a career in fine art photography. Many of these continue to drive my pursuit of photographs that inform the soul and convey my deep belief in the value of wild places.

“Rare Places” in Los Angeles

rtpAdmin — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:53:18 +0000

My traveling exhibit, “Robert Turner: Rare Places in a Rare Light” was hosted most recently by The G2 Gallery in Venice, California. It ran from September 22 through November 8, 2009. The gallery opened in March of 2008 in the bustling Abbot Kinney District in this beach community south of Santa Monica. My pictures showed very nicely in their space.

During the exhibit, I enjoyed spending time in the gallery during a series of public events starting with the crowded, upbeat opening reception. I ended up talking with a number of friends I hadn’t seen for years. The catering was excellent.

On Thursday, October 15th I gave a lecture with projected images to a knowledgeable and enthusiastic group. The questions were among the most perceptive I’ve encountered.

During the exhibit G2 took orders for prints of the photographs in the show as well an additional forty images that were available for review in a portfolio book in the gallery.

Rare Places began its run, in an earlier version, at the San Diego Natural History Museum. In its current form, it has been hosted by venues at Harvard, Cleveland, the Napa Valley of Northern California, and Cody, Wyoming.

Here’s a link to visitor quotes from the gallery guest book in San Diego.

“Alpenglow” in Thread

rtpAdmin — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:52:06 +0000

In a revival of an historic Vietnamese craft tradition, an artisans’ project called La Than Imperial Embroidery has rendered one of my photographs, Alpenglow on Hurricane Ridge, in silk thread. The piece is 7 feet wide, took six needle workers over a year to execute, and utilizes hundreds of distinct thread dyes. It was on display recently as part of a two day La Than demonstration at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design.

Embroidery pieces based on works by two other photographers, Frans Lanting and Christopher Burkett, were also part of the event.

Strikingly juxtaposed to older architecture on Columbus Circle, MAD’s newly dedicated building has gotten a tremendous amount of press coverage in the last few months. (photo: David Heald)

Audio Commentary

rtpAdmin — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:41:37 +0000

When RARE PLACES IN A RARE LIGHT was hosted by the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the museum’s AV staff recorded my observations on the circumstances that produced a number of the images in the show. They edited the interview into an audio guide that visitors could access on iPods at key stops as they toured the exhibit. Excerpts from these tracks are linked to the pictures below. Click on the play button to start each commentary. You may need to download the latest version of Flash Player to hear the audio.

Please download flash to hear this audio.

New Work Gallery

rtpAdmin — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:20:15 +0000

I have begun exploring ways to bring light, form, and color together in a new body of work outside the landscape genre. All of these new images start with a camera. All are printed with archival pigment inks on Hahnemuhle Museum Etching paper. In almost every case they involve a series of variations on a single graphic element. Go to this Journal entry for more background.

For sizes and prices open this PDF form in a new window.

1. Light Painting Series

rtpAdmin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:54:39 +0000

The central “calligraphy” in this series was created by moving a camera in front of a point source of light. I interjected my fingers between the light and the camera at intervals to break up the pattern. The color of the central figure in each pair is constant. However, the perception of that color changes dramatically as it contrasts with the two distinct background colors. The large six panel piece on the left is the primary work in this series. However, the three smaller pairs may be purchased and framed separately.

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2. Light Tubes

rtpAdmin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:52:18 +0000

These “light tubes” were created by photographing colored light bulbs swinging in a pendulum motion. The large four panel piece on the left is the primary work in this series. However, the individual elements may be purchased and framed separately.

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3. Thread Field Series

rtpAdmin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:51:41 +0000

These “thread fields” were originally created as table top constructions strung with actual thread from a sewing supply store at eighth inch intervals in six different colors. In setting them up to photograph, I had trouble getting the lighting even so I decided to recreated them in the computer with four pixel “threads” in the same color sequence. In all three of these studies the thread colors are the same. So it follows that in the two dual background pieces the thread colors are identical on both sides. The apparent differences are due to the way the eye perceives these threads against the distinct backgrounds. The spaces between the threads in the white piece are just as white as the borders but the eye sees a color wash in those spaces thereby creating the pastel bands that give the picture its general structure.

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4. Not Quite Stripes

rtpAdmin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:50:39 +0000

To create the piece, I built a table top construction with a clear acrylic top. I drilled rows of holes in the acrylic and suspended wire in the near ground through the holes. Behind that I suspended colored craft thread, experimenting with a progression of colors across the picture plane. I lit this construction and photographed it against a gray seamless background. In the process I made a number of experiments with depth of field until I got the right balance of in-focus texture with out-of-focus color field.

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