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LA Photographers: Ray Carofano and Anita Bunn

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Date: 
Saturday, 6 January 2018 to Saturday, 3 February 2018
Opening: 
Saturday, 6 January 2018 - 4:00pm to 7:00pm

Two LA based photographers, Ray Carofano and Anita Bunn will show photographic series, each artist expressing a complex emotion using simple subject matter.   Bunn’s work is focused on tops of trees and the sky in Los Angeles.  “In terms of emotion, atmosphere and impact, not to mention light, palette and detail, as well as drama, romance and resolve, these images are as complex as art gets” (David Pagel, LA Times)

Broken Dreams, the 23-year project, examines the disconnect between the American dream of independence and the realities of social isolation.  Carofano’s focus is on the isolated remains of the Mojave Desert, a documentary of the time ravaged dwellings, skeletal remains of once viable communities.  “In Carofano’s photography is a sense of deep time, of history, erosion, decay, passage and renewal.  He takes these abstract ideas and literally allows them to abstract the things he is drawn to.”  Carol McCusker, Associate Curator of Photography at Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA.

Anita Bunn lives in LA and is a professor of photography at LaVerne University. Ray Carofano lives and works in San Pedro also directing Gallery 478.

Artist ( Description ): 

Recent Work, Anita Bunn, Statement - Anita Bunn’s work is an investigation into the act of noticing, of turning away from spectacle and the obvious. Her photographs, digital videos, and prints explore an unfamiliarity with the familiar as well as how objects negotiate a shared space. Additionally, her work seeks out the subtle shifts in perception that occur over time and through repetition, allowing for different ways of looking at an object and crystallizing the complexity and nuance that exist within a seemingly simple construct. 

The prints in the most recent body of work (“Index”) embody the unique relationship between the city of Los Angeles and its natural surroundings, especially during a time of drought, while referencing a personal love of botanical illustrations and traditional Chinese and Japanese representations of the landscape. Made with master printer Francesco Siqueiros of El Nopal Press, these portraits of plants native to Southern California, are original digital captures printed as continuous tone lithographs that address an ongoing interest in combining traditional analog techniques with contemporary digital photography. 

Ms. Bunn grew up in Houston, Texas but has made Los Angeles her home for more than 25 years. Anita received a BA in Fine Art from Trinity University, a BFA in Photography from Art Center College of Design, and an MFA in Photography from Claremont Graduate University. She is currently Adjunct faculty at several local colleges and universities, teaching black and white darkroom photography, digital photography, digital imaging, and studio lighting for photography. Anita exhibited locally with Offramp Gallery (recently closed) and regularly participates in group exhibitions and with local artist-run spaces. She shows her work both nationally and internationally, and is in many public and private collections, including the Wallace Annenberg Department of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Scripps College, and the Capital Group, Los Angeles.

Broken Dreams, Ray Carofano, Statement - For more than two decades I have been combing California’s Mojave and Sonora deserts compiling a large comprehensive body of work. Weather and time ravaged dwellings, both occupied and abandoned, decaying infrastructure, and the skeletal remains of once viable communities and outposts. The images trace society’s impact on open space like punctuation marks on a blank page.

It has been described by The Center for Land Use Interpretation as a territory that “engenders a full spectrum of perceptions, a place that accommodates extremes and tolerates a kind of freedom that expands the margins of society, and is refuge for various outsiders, radicals, and rebels.” This is the territory of “Broken Dreams”, a documentary on the present as past in the desert of exurban Los Angeles.

Early on I simply called the work The Mojave Series, but as time passed I began to understand, to recognize, the hopes and dreams these exiles must have had: the dream of open space, sunny and warm, the possibility of total freedom and independence, a welcome refuge. But for many isolation soon turned to desolation – the desert can be a harsh and cruel place. In 2009 I renamed the series Broken Dreams and published a limited edition book, excerpts of which were featured in LensWork, No. 104, February 2013.

Telephone: 
310-429-0973
Other Info: 

Artist Ray Carofano will be featured in an artist talk on Saturday, Feb 3, 4-6pm. 

Venue ( Address ): 

3718 West Slauson Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90043

SoLA Contemporary , Los Angeles

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