On Display: October 15 – November 15, 2008
Opening Reception: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 6pm – 9pm

Exhibiting photographers: Timothy Briner, Jon Feinstein, Matthew Gamber, Justin James Reed, Angie Smith, Brian Ulrich and Michael Vahrenwald

BOND STREET GALLERY is pleased to present Revisiting America, a group show curated by amani olu. This exhibition explores the shift in American culture following the Second World War, and how that shift has influenced American values today.

The exhibition examines different trends and perspectives in contemporary art photography through the bias of six emerging curators. Each curator (or curatorial group), using roughly ten feet of space, aims to engage viewers in a discussion on where he or she believes art photography is today.

Timothy Briner, Justin James Reed, Michael Vahrenwald and Angie Smith each address the dichotomy inherent in economic progress. Briner intimately photographs the people and spaces in various towns named Boonville across the country. His pictures capture the remnants of small-town America despite the rapid development of strip malls and suburban hegemony. Reed examines how homogeneity in corporate development has created an unfamiliar and unnatural American landscape. Seeing with a subtler eye, Vahrenwald photographs the empty spaces between agriculture and commercial architecture. He uses ambient light from the parking lots that parallel these spaces to create a sense of leftover, discarded landscape. Similarly, Smith photographs newly developed residential communities. Her images offer a less bleak view of development, depicting how people inhabit these once isolated environments.

Jon Feinstein and Brian Ulrich use consumerism to draw conclusions about American behavior. Feinstein’s simultaneously alluring and repulsive imagery begs the viewer to reconsider fast food consumption, while Ulrich’s portraits document the tedious consumer experience, providing a window onto the perfunctory ritual of "big box" shopping.

Finally, Matthew Gamber creates photograms of iconic American television shows such as Leave it to Beaver, Hogan’s Hero and I Love Lucy. Using the television as a light source, these photograms deal with advent of technology and ideologies of the day.

Artist Biographies

Timothy Briner (b. 1981) is an American photographer living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Raised in Indiana, Briner moved to Massachusetts to attend the Hallmark Institute of Photography in 1999. Briner recently returned from a year-long journey in which he documented six smalls towns across the continental United States, all named Boonville. Briner's work has been exhibited locally and nationally.

Jon Feinstein is a photographer and curator based in NYC. His work has been published in Gotham, Nylon, Heeb, New York Press, and Vice and has been exhibited throughout the United States. He is also the curatorial director for the art-photography non-profit Humble Arts Foundation. He has curated numerous exhibitions, most recently "Young Curators New Ideas," and "31 under 31: Young Women in Art Photography." Jon holds a BA in photography from Bard College.

Matthew Gamber earned an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University. He is currently an imaging technician with Imaging & Preservation at Harvard University, and Editor-in-Chief of Big RED & Shiny. He has taught at Savannah College of Art & Design, Art Institute of Boston/Lesley University, College of the Holy Cross, and Massachusetts College of Art & Design. Gamber is represented by Gallery Kayafas in Boston, Massachusetts.

Justin James Reed (b. 1981) received his MFA in photography from the Tyler School of Art in Elkins Park, Pa. His photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally, and are in numerous private collections. He teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design, Tyler School of Art, and The College of New Jersey. He lives in Pennsylvania.

Angie Smith is a freelance photographer based in Los Angeles. Originally from Eugene, Oregon, she moved to upstate New York to attend Bard College in 1999. After studying photography for four years with Larry Fink, she moved to New York City to start her career. In 2007, Angie left New York to return to her West Coast roots. She now resides in Los Angeles. She continues to exhibit her work, as well as shoots for magazines nationwide. Her work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Forbes, Budget Travel, and Men's Journal.

Brian Ulrich was born 1971 in Northport, NY. His photographs portray contemporary consumer culture. His first monograph, Copia was published in 2006 by Aperture as part of the MP3: Midwest Photographers Project. In 2007 Ulrich was named one of the years 30 Emerging Photographers by Photo District News magazine, and a critic’s pick by Richard Woodward for ARTnews magazine.

Michael Vahrenwald is a photographer who lives and works in New York City. His work has been shown at a variety of venues including the Whitney Museum, New York and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. His work will be included in the upcoming show "Worlds Away" at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA. He is currently a Visiting Professor of Photography at Bard College and The Cooper Union.