The Atlanta Celebrates Photography (ACP) Festival takes place every year during the month of October. This nonprofit arts organization promotes the photographic arts within the Atlanta art community year-round. The month-long festival, scheduled for every October, is dedicated to Atlanta-based photographers who seek to enrich the community with their unique perspectives through the use of technical skills and artistic visions.
R. Alexander has displayed the photographic series of Atlanta artist Gail Foster as part of the Atlanta Celebrates Photography festival. Gail Foster’s series, entitled New Meanings, New Stories: A Photographic Exploration of Found-Object Sculptures, captures the ephemeral nature of our physical presence and contrasts the emphasis on the physical with the elusive spiritual transformation of the ordinary into the extraordinary.
The process Foster uses to photograph the works becomes integral in reading and understanding the works, as she has taken many measures in preparing the shot: she finds the loose materials strewn about the city, builds them into ethereal sculpture pieces, and shoots them against a dark background, as if taking their portraits. The physical presence of these objects are molded anew with each step of the process, starting out as debris, then transforming into an element of a structure, and then becoming an intangible image against a black backdrop. The photograph, in the end, strips the sculpture of its physical presence, but allows the viewer to be taken in by the textures, colors, and details enhanced by the photograph. The physical function of these sculptures changes in every step of the process, making the photograph the final physical representation.
Foster, in using this process, also explores the idea of spiritual transformation. The essence of the sculpture is changed by its physical contexts. Her ability to take an ordinary object and transform it into an object of beauty and desire is inherently grounded in the spiritual, in that every thing possesses a mysterious life force. The artist finds new ways to convey transformation, growth, and utility of seemingly mundane surroundings. What Foster shows us is that nothing is mundane; everything is extraordinary, and that everything can be turned into art.
Click here to view the online catalog of Foster’s works
Foster’s photographic series is on display the month of October.
R. Alexander Fine Art 