Events

Gallery Carte Blanche is pleased to announce the opening of WaterLand, a solo exhibition by Donna J. Wan on Friday, February 15th, 2013. 

WaterLand:
Water has always been an important theme in art - both as a vital element for humans and the planet and as a sacred symbol of purity. Water covers 71 percent and 140 million square miles of the Earth’s surface. It is a source of life, food, beauty and recreation, and the center of rising environmental concerns. We all use water - in our homes, at work, at play, and in our industries - and we are all part of and responsible for its condition and future. As water becomes a scarce resource, it threatens to change almost every aspect of our lives. 

Through her photographs, Donna J. Wan doesn’t try to make a political statement about humankind’s impact on the environment. She observes and reports what she sees about how people experience and are affected by water. Our footprints on the landscape are unmistakably visible in her work, but her photographs invite us to reflect on how our perceptions and identities are shaped by the land and the water surrounding it.  More than beautiful sceneries, her work highlights the different ways in which we experience and interact with water in the landscape - for recreation, function, or contemplation.  She shows us that water can be a source of enjoyment, peace, awe, and even fear.  But, because humankind continues to squander and pollute it, her photographs also inevitably question what is at stake if we continue to alter the landscape and the role of water in it. At our current pace of development and water usage, will scenes like the ones captured in her photographs soon become visions of the past?

WaterLand, Donna J. Wan opens on Friday, February 15th and runs through March 27th, 2013.   An opening reception in presence of the artist will be held on Friday, February 15th from 6pm–9pm.

Donna J. Wan was born in Taiwan and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.  After receiving a BA in economics from Stanford University and working in the corporate world for a few years, Donna decided to pursue her love for art, and completed a MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2008.  Having grown up in New York City, she only recently developed an interest in the natural world. 

Donna’s landscape photographs reflect a continual search for her to understand and express how perceptions and identities are shaped by the landscapes that surround us.  She takes photographs in both the United States and Asia and in both the natural and built environments.   

Refugee Hotel is a groundbreaking collection of photography and interviews that documents the arrival of refugees in the United States. Evocative images are coupled with moving testimonies from people describing their first days in the U.S., the lives they’ve left behind, and the new communities they’ve since created. 

About the Photographer:
Gabriele Stabile is an Italian photographer based in New York City. His photography has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. 

About the Editor:
Juliet Linderman is a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Formerly the editor of a small community newspaper, she has written for many publications including the New York Times and the Village Voice.

Among the Narrators:
PSAW WAH BAW, who was forced to flee her village in Burma amidst armed conflict. She describes how her family left their village with just five cups of rice, beginning an arduous journey toward resettlement that would take them through Bangkok, Tokyo, Illinois, and Texas.

PASTOR NOEL, who fled the civil war in Burundi in 1972 for a refugee camp in Congo. When war erupted in Congo in 1996, Noel was once again forced from his home. He now lives in Mobile, Alabama, and is a central figure in the African refugee community.

FELIX, a South Sudanese man who joined the rebel army as a teenager but eventually fled to a refugee camp in Kenya. Felix now lives in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he works with Habitat for Humanity to assist African refugees in purchasing their own homes.

Gallery Carte Blanche will open a unique exhibition featuring new work by award winning fashion photographer Liz Caruana on January 25, 2013, on view until February 13, 2013. The Bay: Creators of Style is a solo portrait show and book release featuring intimate images of San Francisco Bay Area Fashion designers. A selection of images will be featured at the Gallery with the entire series of 61 images in the accompanying book. Gallery Carte Blanche will hold an opening reception with the artist Friday January 25, from 7-9:30 p.m. and an
Artist Talk will be held at 7:30 p.m. with a book signing from 7:45-8:15pm.

The Bay: Creators of Style is a photographic study of the independent clothing, jewelry, handbag, and hat designer community. This cross-section of 48 companies represent the best and most well known names in haute couture and ready to wear. Bay Area darlings like Christopher Collins, Camelia Skikos, Daniel Sudar, Joseph Domingo, Nooworks, and FluffyCo show their true personalities in these black and white portraits revealing the heart and soul behind their brands. While other cities tout themselves as capitals of fashion, Bay Area designers are so much more. They are committed to their community’s morals and standards and operate their businesses on
principles of eco-friendly and “made in America.” These principles are what make them unique and position them opposite the flood of mass-produced, outsourced, and cheaply made products on the market. This ethic is the core of what Bay Area fashion design is all about.
 

About the photographer
Born in Canada, Liz Caruana studied Cinema at the University of Toronto, embracing the idea of creating images that tell stories. She went on to work on feature films until transitioning to photography upon her move to San Francisco in 2004. In 2010, Liz Caruana was awarded San Francisco’s Best Fashion Photographer. Regarding this art show Caruana stated “The Bay Area has such talented designers, I wanted to share who these creative forces were.”
 

An 8.5x6 boutique photo book titled The Bay: Creators of Style accompanies the exhibition. The publication includes 54 black and white images and personal stories from the designers. It is available for pre-order until Dec. 5, 2012 with limited copies available for sale at the reception.

CHANGSHA is a book of photographs and text produced over six years living and working in mainland China. Moving beyond the urban-centric/scenic/iconic structures, which dominate the current visual record of China, this book looks at the complications of rapid change in smaller provincial cities and prefectures far removed from the country's coastal metropoles. Tracing a personal narrative across the diverse geographies of these regions, Changsha tells the intimate stories of people living in a society set on fast-forward. Theirs is a legacy of inconstancy, dislocation and sustained cultural shift. China is a civilization in flux. Changsha is a city on fire.

 

   

Featuring Bay Area photographers, Kirk Crippens, Alan W George, Esmeralda Ruiz, Charity Vargas & Winni Wintermeyer.

In celebration of its one-year anniversary, Gallery Carte Blanche is pleased to announce the opening of their San Francisco-centric exhibition Call Me Home on Friday, November 30, 2012.  Featuring a series of photographs taken throughout San Francisco by 5 local photographers, Call Me Home is the exclamation mark after “Happy One-year Anniversary Carte Blanche!”

One year ago, on November 25^th, Carte Blanche opened its Valencia Street doors. Since opening, numerous photography lovers and talented artists have become part of the gallery’s community. Hundreds of photographs and books have been exhibited on the gallery walls, shelves and tables, transforming the space into the home for photography it was conceived to be. Celebrating international visions and talents, Gallery Carte Blanche’s programming responds to the passion and commitment of photographers from around the world and from just around the corner.

After one year of multicultural discoveries and international inspiration provided through exhibitions, artists, talks and special programming, Gallery Carte Blanche is happy to celebrate year one with a bevy of local talent. Each of the 5 photographers represented in Call Me Home, like gallery owner Gwen Lafage, are non-native San Franciscans who have adopted this city and call it home. Notes gallery owner, Gwen Lafage, “An artistic inspiration for generations, San Francisco continually enchants and fascinates. The diversity and vibrancy of the City by the Bay make it a mysterious harbor, a place where life is quirky and accepting of people idiosyncrasies.” The photographs in Call Me Home capture these San Francisco wonders and engage with the landscape, exploring the city from the vantage points of its residential homes, foggy vistas and neon-lit alleys.

About the Photographers:

Kirk Crippens

Kirk Crippens had an early start with photography, inspired by his grandfather who kept a closet darkroom. As a college student Crippens ventured into photojournalism, interning at prestigious newspapers around the United States. Based in San Francisco since 2000, he has since focused his efforts on personal projects. In 2011 he was included in eighteen exhibitions, three of which were solo shows. Crippens was named one of the Top 50 Photographers in Critical Mass for the second consecutive year, nominated for Photolucida’s book prize, and exhibited in the International Photography Festival in Lishui, China. Currently the Artist-in-Residence at RayKo Photo Center in San Francisco, Crippens will begin a new residency in 2013 where he will be the Artist-in-Residence at Newspace Center for Photography in Portland, Oregon.

Alan W George

Alan W. George was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina on the first day of the last month of 1968. Alan first started exploring photography as a form of self-expression more or less eight years ago, serving as a survival tool for divorce, two children and getting old, among other things. George lives and plays in San Francisco, and in his precious spare time he can be found roaming the roads of Northern California, occasionally stopping to take a photograph.

Esmeralda Ruiz

Esmeralda Ruiz grew up in a small art studio in San Fernando Valley, CA with her two artist parents who exposed her to the wonders of all art forms at a young age. A key step in her way to becoming a photographer was when her father passed over his Hasselblad camera, and told her "A camera is a tool that you can use to capture the world around you. Just remember you are the voice behind the lens." These words still resonate with Ruiz as she uses and transforms the landscape that surrounds her to represent her dreams, and to make visual references to a time in her childhood when she flat-lined for three minutes. Thriving on adventure, most of Ruiz’s images are made while she travels, especially down the California coastline. Her images create a vast, peaceful space that is universal to all viewers and allows the mind to wander.

Charity Vargas

Raised on an Air Force base near Canada, in the foothills of Sierra Nevada Mountains surrounded by old cedars and snow, and still later in the suburbs - surrounded by little, Charity Vargas now lives in one of the San Francisco Presidio’s historic houses. The majority of her work has been photographing in the Presidio, a former Army base transformed into Americas’ largest urban national park. The forests and military industrial architecture here do not seem at odds to her, where nature thrives alongside structures modified over many years, for many uses. Since 2003 Vargas has photographed the Presidio and its changes, noting that its complex landscape feels familiar to her.

Winni Wintermeyer

Born in the industrial Ruhr Valley in Bochum, Germany, Winni Wintermeyer moved to San Francisco in the early 1990s, settling in a neighborhood where mockingbirds imitate the sounds of cheap car alarms. Working as an editorial photographer he creates images of people for various publications around the globe. In his free time Wintermeyer likes to observe and document humans and the traces they leave behind, taking those images and rearranging them to tell new stories. You can find his work at Hespe Gallery and the SFMOMA Artists Gallery.

 

Ken and Melanie Light embarked on a five-year photographic journey of a region known for its agricultural plenty – and the marginalization of its people. In their book, “Valley of Shadows and Dreams,” the Lights dig deep into the harsh truths of farm workers’ daily experiences in California’s Central Valley and take a hard look at the legacies of politics, bureaucracy and control in the region.

"We were astonished by the frenzy of development there. Massive tracts of agricultural land were being turned into cul de sacs and suburban neighborhoods. Though we started to explore that story, we soon discovered a complex web that went far beyond residential development. As we witnessed the real estate bubble implode in the valley, we expanded our story to what I can only describe as a slow motion train wreck of unsustainability. This project gripped me at many levels because the issues are played out in the valley American style but they are the global challenges of our generation: water, land use, population, growing economic disparity. It will be fascinating to see how the pressure between a growing population and the limits of the earth unfolds; how the challenges are met or how we fail to find a model for sustainability."

Register here: http://kmlightbooksigning.eventbrite.com/

Gallery Carte Blanche is pleased to announce the opening of CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’, Guillaume Grasset on Friday, October 26th, 2012.

At age 20 Guillaume Grasset left Paris to start his own American dream. He spent a few years working with many talented photographers in LA before starting his solo career. With an acute awareness and a free spirit, Guillaume seeks out new visual spaces, exploring deserted playgrounds, bright & natural environments, dark cities and vibrant megalopolises, to reveal the traces of mankind in this ever-changing world.

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’ is a selection of his Californian landscapes.

Guillaume traveled through quiet nights and peaceful days and revealed in his photographs an intriguing, almost unreal world. With his medium format camera, he gives an eccentric personality to fragments of everyday California.
At first, his images seem endearingly carefree, but he progressively focuses on how man is constantly altering and reshaping the environment. His images become reflections of a land turned upside down by cycles of economic boom and bust, conquest and isolation.
A land caught between the harsh realities of the American way of Life and the glamour of California Dreamin’.

Cig Harvey’s new book, You Look At Me Like An Emergency, a collection of journeys, secrets and wishes, is a stunning visual autobiography through seventy-four vibrant photographs and seventeen emotionally raw vignettes. This striking exploration of the artist’s own emotional life follows the arch of universal and timeless archetypes: rejection, hope, indecision, strength, loss, and love.

Through words and pictures Harvey has recorded an imaginative epic of unknowing, discovery, and deepening; she reveals herself, in all her complications and anecdotal delight, as a person coming to grips with that significant other who does, now and then, regard her as amiably odd, perhaps even needful of loving care.

Between Destinations is a stunning new photography book featuring the latest work of Candace Plummer Gaudiani.

Her images lyrically transform the vistas of train travel into personal artistic statements reflecting the photographer’s haunting memories of an earlier time. The book, published by Kehrer Verlag, includes an extensive essay by Alison Nordström and an interview with Jane Reed.

A SURVEY OF DOCUMENTARY STYLES IN EARLY 21st CENTURY PHOTOBOOKS

Selections from the Indie Photobook Library
Curated by Darius Himes & Larissa Leclair