The dispassionate remove common to
most modern portraits is all but absent in these images; in its stead
is a passionate complicity between artist and sitter that allows each
subject to be memorialized with both beauty and grace.
–Robert A. Sobieszek, Former
Head Curator of Photograph
Los
Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles, CA—The
Alitash Kebede Gallery presents The Journey Portraits, a retrospective
of photographer Dana Gluckstein. The exhibition opens with a
private reception and benefit on Saturday, March 18th, 2006 from 5 to 8
pm, as the artist and gallery are donating
a percentage of print sales to Artists for a New South
Africa. South African wine for the private reception has been
donated by Urbane Wine. The exhibition opens to the public on
March 21st, and continues through April 29th. The Alitash Kebede
Gallery is located at 170 S. La Brea Avenue, just north of 2nd Street.
“The images haunted me,” says
Gluckstein of the subjects her black and white portraits depict in
Haiti, Kenya, Mexico, Australia, Bali, Hawaii and Sicily. They
“transported me beyond a privileged Beverly Hills background to a
primordial place. A memory of when the earth was clean, the air
fragrant and the waters magical. Where first peoples understood nature
and the rhythms of body and soul. Truly, the loss of these
peoples, their cultures and lands, will also be the demise of
civilization as reflected in the sorrow of this overly industrialized,
polluted and war-torn world.”
Gluckstein’s work has been collected by
the Los Angeles County and Santa Barbara Museums of Art. Stanford
University educated, she is an award-winning photographer who has
worked extensively in the magazine and advertising worlds and is
currently in development on a fictional motion picture inspired by a
true Native Hawaiian story. Her clients range from political
icons to celebrities such as Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Tony
Curtis, Jane Russell, and major corporations including Apple and
Toyota.
Robert Sobieszek, one of the most
influential and respected American photography curators who died last
year, wrote about Gluckstein’s work, “…while no single photographic
portrait can justly capture an inner soul or the varied nuances of
anyone’s psyche, it would seem nevertheless that something quite vital
is lacking in the manner which portraits are created today. And
that something is nothing less than the desire, or the requirement, to
express the character and moral quality of the sitter in such a way
that far more than a likeness is suggested if not exactly
revealed. Her subjects, whether a Haitian worker, a blind Masai
elder, a Mayan woman, or an Australian aboriginal artist, are, as it
were, simply fellow travelers encountered along the way; yet with all
the cool delineation afforded by modern equipment and techniques,
Gluckstein succeeds in bestowing upon her sitters a sense of stilled
dignity, a humaneness entirely devoid of any temporary, fleeting, or
accidental quality.”
The Alitash Kebede Gallery,
currently celebrating its 21st anniversary, presents changing
exhibitions by modern and contemporary international artists and offers
a selection of 20th Century masterworks for sale. The gallery
works with many of the finest contemporary and modern American artists,
including painters, sculptors, photographers, print makers and
multi-media artists. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday,
11am-6pm, and by special appointment. For further information on the
artist or gallery, please contact Alitash Kebede, (323) 549-0003,
alitash@alitashkgallery.com.
Artists for a New South Africa
(ANSA) is a non-profit organization working in the U.S. and South
Africa to advance human and civil rights, combat HIV/AIDS and care
for children orphaned by the disease. Since 1995, ANSA has raised
more than $8 million for effective African non-profits, shipped more
than 70 tons of medical supplies and books to impoverished communities,
and reached millions of people in South Africa and America with
essential information about HIV/AIDS and voting rights. Founded
in 1989 to help support the struggle against apartheid, ANSA founders,
board members and core supporters include Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
Alfre Woodard, Carlos & Deborah Santana, Blair Underwood, Gillian
Anderson and LaTanya Richardson & Samuel L. Jackson. For
further information on ANSA, please contact Sharon Gelman, (310)
204-1748 or sharon@ansafrica.org
Photographing is like profound love
making. Time stops and souls meet in the ethereal moment of a
portrait. To witness another human being with dignity and grace
is an act of love between the photographer and subject. It is the
essence of my journey.
The first decade of my work was
inspired by dreams that called me to visit indigenous people.
Whenever I was hired to shoot corporate advertising campaigns in
foreign countries, I would take the opportunity to travel to the places
that beckoned me, inevitably, to the people wounded and lands destroyed
by Western capitalism. I would shoot an annual report in Puerto
Rico, then, travel to Haiti. I would photograph the British Army
in England for a computer company, then, fly to Kenya.
The images haunted me. They
transported me beyond a privileged Beverly Hills background to a
primordial place, a memory of when the earth was clean, the air
fragrant, the waters magical, to where the first peoples understood
nature and the rhythms of body and soul. I realized the ancient
ones were critical to our struggling humanity. Truly, the loss of
these peoples, their cultures and lands, would be the demise of
civilization, reflected in the sorrow of this overly industrialized,
polluted and war-torn world. As time passed, I began to seek
specific cultures. I met their artists, dancers, chanters,
weavers and teachers.
I want to continue this journey through
my lifetime. May these archetypal images drift through your
dreams and tap realms that lie dormant. Hungry for an enlightened
world, we are all fellow travelers, all keepers of the dream.
This exhibit is dedicated to the memory
of my mentor, Robert Sobieszek, Former Head Curator of Photography, Los
Angeles County Museum of Art.
