Persona
July 22, 2016Persona
Trois Gallery Oct. 2-30, 2015
SCAD Atlanta
1600 Peachtree St, 4th Floor
Atlanta, GA, 30309
“Persona” is an exhibition of exceptional recent work created by SCAD Atlanta graduate and undergraduate photography students. With more than 50 photographs on view, “Persona” demonstrates the talent, personal vision and point of view that characterize SCAD student photographers. The exhibition features inventive and expressive approaches to portraiture such as cyanotypes, camera obscure, mixed media photo collage, multiple exposure, and artist’s books, along with digital color photography, and black and white prints. This exhibition is held in conjunction with Atlanta Celebrates Photography 2015 and is curated by Alexandra Sachs, curator of exhibitions, in cooperation with Michael James O’Brien, associate chair of photography department, SCAD Atlanta.
Featured artists:
Hrishikesh Bhattar, Frances Claudio- Vargas, Alicia Collins, Stephanie Eley, Ervin Johnson, Matt King, Shoccara Marcus, Joshua McFadden, Tho Pham, Andrew Sisk, Julisiah Toney.
Celebrating a new shared direction in the recent practices of SCAD-Atlanta photography students. Persona showcases more than fifty artworks that turn away from the trappings of the outside world and consider, instead, inward, personal reflection as their focus. Adapting the centuries-old genre of portraiture to contemporary issues of identity, undergraduate and graduate students have represented their own likenesses and this of family members, friends and strangers from all over the world in the process of self-discovery and as a means to establish their own points of view.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines persona as “the aspect of a person’s character that is displayed to or perceived by others.” This description indicates a meeting point between the self and the other and a distinction among who a person is, what that person presents to the world and how that information is interpreted. The collection of works on view in Persona probes this intersection. The images convey the artists’ individual growing pains, journeys toward self-discovery, genealogical investigations and struggles with perception, all the while proclaiming pride, truth and acceptance. Confronting viewers’ preconceptions, each photography becomes a voice amplified, a transformation, a personal presence of the subject and the artist.
The represented aorists challenge the genre of portraiture not only in content but also in practice. Portraiture is reinvented using the oldest techniques, like the pinhole camera, the most current methods and everything in-between. The works on view include cyanotypes, mixed media photographic collage, multiple exposure, artist’s books, digital color photography, black and white prints and video. Images range from formal portraits to blurred abstractions.
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Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “persona,” accessed September 9, 2015, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/141478?redirectedFrom=persona#eid.
