The Soho Photo Members’ second annual Small Works Exhibition, which opened on February 9th at the Soho Photo Gallery in Tribeca, captured the power of “small” as part of a creative competition showcasing photographic images no larger than six by six inches. Baby boomers will remember how Volkswagen capitalized on the concept with their 1959 “Think Small” ad campaign, the highest ranked in the 20th century. Small is as disarming, sexy, and fun in cars as it is in photographs as demonstrated in this beguiling show which provides a fashionable reprieve from the ubiquity of supersized images. Veteran Karen Marks, Exhibitions Director of the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York, acted as juror.
Papier, the series by first place winner Pat Beary, was prominently featured at the entrance of the non-profit cooperative gallery. Un, Deux, Trois, Quatre, and Cinq form studies of hand-made paper found by the photographer in a Parisian boutique. Exemplified by the topography shown in Trois, Beary captures paper’s organic, birch and coral-like properties, and most important, the imagination of anyone who writes or draws.
Sea Montauk #1 © Minney Lee
Red Blue Blue Red © Mike Callaghan
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade 2010 © Helen Ellis
Snowfield #2 © John Atchley
While gallery members were ineligible to participate in the contest, 15 presented a variety of images in a corresponding esprit de corps. Standouts include two archival inkjet prints by Mike Cullin whose relativism on “small” yielded images of trees cropped to the size of two, “forever” postage stamps with shadows front and center in works named Abstract Landscape #13 and Abstract Landscape #205.
Winners of the competition were rewarded when their images captured the felicity of expressing “small”, a challenge which seemed effortless in the hands of the most mindful of the participants.
Abandon © Passy Lynn
Abstract Landscape #205 © Mike Cullen
All images courtesy Soho Photo Gallery; Small Works 2012 catalog images can be found at:
http://www.sohophoto.com/downloads/smallworks_winners_gallery2012.pdf