April 2008: Zachary Mazur

Chain Reaction: Circum-navigating the Hanford Nuclear Reservation
Zachary Mazur explores the social and environmental issues surrounding the Hanford Nuclear Reservation through a series of images taken as he travelled the 586 square mile perimeter.

Established as part of the Manhattan Project in 1943, Hanford is the largest nuclear waste facility in the Western Hemisphere. These photographs challenge our mythology of "Great American West" by juxtapositioning the beautiful visual aesthetic of the photographs with the knowledge that this is a toxic landscape that has become the world's largest environmental cleanup effort.

To see more of Zachary Mazur's work visit his website at www.photozam.com

January 2008: Bobbi Zorn

The SFCC Photography gallery is proud to host the abstract photographs of Bobbi Zorn. Bobbi is a former student of our program and is active in the Spokane Camera Club.

"I'm a simple-minded photographer. I believe the simpler the composition the easier on the mind. We all need a rest from the informational highway that constantly bombards us daily. "

To see more of Bobbi Zorn's work check out her website at: http://www.phottwigging.com/-/phottwigging/

November 2007: Douglas Bienert

Artist Statement
For centuries artist created by making images on objects such as cave walls, vases, pieces of wood, canvas, and church ceilings. With painting, ideas, shapes, and realistic objects are composed by the artist in an ordered way on these pre-chosen surfaces. Photography was a revolutionary way of creating. Through the lens a “canvas” is placed in front of the world. Imposing this window allows the photographer to find the order hidden in what appears to be chaos. With the advent of digital imaging and Photoshop the photographer can now more readily combine objects from various images, combining them into one. I was trained before this era and was inspired by the earlier philosophy of seeing.

Ever since my dad bought me my first camera, a Pentax K1000, I have loved wandering the city. The images in “Urban Wayfarer” explore the cities of Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, British Columbia in abstracted detail. Though digitally created, these are not multiple photographs combined into a new image. These photographs are found “as they are”. The only manipulations are similar to a traditional darkroom where basic colour is worked with and selective lightening and darkening of areas of the print are made. In this way these photographs are the ordinary transformed. All of these images are of things one may pass by every day without noticing: a dumpster, cement benches, or a locked parking garage.

The camera is my tool. Through it I give a reason to everything
around me.

-Andre Kertesz

About the edition.
Each print in “Urban Wayfarer” is limited to 20 signed copies. Prints are carbon pigment giclée prints on 100% cotton archival rag paper, sprayed with archival fixative. The prints are mounted and window-matted with 100% cotton archival museum quality mount board.
About the artist

Douglas Bienert is a freelance photographer from Portland, Oregon. In high school he was fortunate to have been schooled in classical fine art black and white photographic technique. In 1991 he graduated from Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California earning a B.A. in Advertising and Illustration Photography. He returned to Portland and taught photography at the high school level until 1999. In addition to his fine art, his services are available for portraits and commercial advertising projects.

To see more of his work visit www.douglasbienert.com.