December 20, 2009 – April 30, 2010

The Shape of Time: accumulations of place and memory explores urban landscape and public memory through the lens of the Jewish experience in Oregon. The Oregon Jewish Museum’s extensive archives of historical photographs (both present and familiar and long gone locations in and around Portland and the state) serve as a memory bank from which invited artists will choose a sampling. The exhibition will feature the artists’ photographic responses to the original works –juxtaposing “past” and “present” images as a unit.

The goal of the exhibit is to go beyond historical comparisons of familiar locations or architecture. Rather, the work will initiate a dialogue about the specifics of Jewish history in Oregon as it ties to spatial location and public memory. Equally important, we are interested in how a photographic response to archival images might augment, shape or replace an eroded group memory, which never depended on historians in the first place.  This step into a city’s and a culture’s well of history and memory helps us to uncover what Dolores Hayden has called “the power of place–the power of ordinary urban landscapes to nurture citizens’ public memory, to encompass shared time in the form of shared territory.” The intersection of private observation and collective memory captured by the photographs and our reactions to them should help us gain new perspectives on change.

The exhibition is guest-curated by Tim DuRoche. Photographers include Bobby Abrahamson, Jeff Amram, William Galen, Stu Levy and Carol Isaak, David Lanthan Reamer and Sika Stanton.

 

About the Photographers
Bobby Abrahamson received his MA in Media Studies from New School University, with a focus on documentary photography and film history, theory, criticism, production and education. His work has been presented in six solo shows and numerous group exhibitions in the United States and Europe. His freelance clients include, among others, the New York Times, TIME, U.S. News and World Report and Wieden & Kennedy. Bobby has taught photography in a variety of educational settings and distinguished himself through educational outreach to at-risk youth and other marginalized populations. He is represented by the photo news agency Black Star.

Jeff Amram, a native New Yorker now based in Portland, has been a professional photographer for more than 20 years. He came to photography through the film and advertising industry for which he still does location scouting for television commercials and print advertisements. Jeff has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles and Tulsa, among others. In addition to his focus on fine art photography, Jeff is involved with commercial projects, which includes editorial work, real estate and architectural photography, weddings and events, portraiture, and shooting production stills on movie sets.

Dr. William Galen, a Portland native, began photographing at age 11.  He has studied with leaders in the field, including Minor White, Imogen Cunningham, and Jerry Uelsmann.  In 1970, he started and directed the fine art Camerawork Gallery, which is still one of the premier outlets for established and emerging photographers. His work has been shown in solo and group shows; published in Aperture Magazine; and is included in the collection of the Portland Art Museum.  His medical practice was devoted to clinical research and the treatment of people with cancer.

Carol Isaak was educated at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, in New York City, where she spent the early part of her adult life. She has lived in Portland, Oregon, for the past 16 years. Carol is a veteran photographer whose work is steadily gaining recognition. She was a finalist in Photolucida's Critical Mass 2009 competition. Carol is a featured photographer in this year’s China-Lishui International Photography Culture Festival during late November 2009 in Lishui, which is home to the only photography museum in the country. She is currently exhibiting at the University of Oregon Law School Gallery until July 20, 2010.

Dr. Stu Levy started to photograph in the1950s in his native Ohio. Originally self-taught, he focused on street photography and the early Rock and Roll music scene. During his residency as a medical doctor in Portland, OR, he was introduced to the work of Eliot Porter and Ansel Adams with whom he took a workshop in 1979 at Yosemite. Stu became an assistant instructor at Adam’s workshops in the following years and developed an intense appreciation of the abstract and mystical possibilities inherent in black and white photography as well as a herald to the fragility of nature. He exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions, is featured in important public collections and has received a number of awards. The Oregon Historical Society and the Portland Art Museum published his most recent book, Heritage Lost.

David Lanthan Reamer has been photographing since his childhood in New Jersey. He received a degree in English literature but split time in his early career between photography and cooking.  Since coming to Portland in 2003, he has concentrated on editorial photography, which can be seen in Portland Monthly, Northwest Palate, Portland Mercury, Willamette Week and PDX Magazine, GQ, Wallpaper, and Travel and Leisure. He has also had a solo show, The Stranger’s Lense, at Newspace Center for Photography.

Sika Stanton was born in Portland, Maine and received her BA from Stanford University. Over the last few years her work has appeared in a number of group exhibitions, including the recent SQFT at Blackfish Gallery, John Brodie’s Store for a Month, New Antiquarians at Chambers Gallery in 2008 and at Newspace Center for Photography. Stanton was a recent semifinalist in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition for the National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian Institution, received the 2008 Oregon Photo Award at Photolucida and the John Shively Fowler Award in Photography at Stanford University (2004).

About the Curator
Tim DuRoche is the Community Programs Manager for Portland Center Stage/Gerding Theater at the Armory, responsible for the direction of innovative outreach and engagement strategies and an array of public programs and community partnerships that focus on sustainability, civic engagement, historic preservation and the arts. He is also a writer, curator, and jazz artist whose public art/installation work include a South Waterfront Sound Commission as part of the 2007–2008 “South Waterfront Artist in Residence” and compositions and scores for Tere Mathern Dance, Cydney Wilkes, Oslund+Co. BodyVox, and Linda K. Johnson. Tim is active on the Multnomah County Cultural Coalition and the governing committee for the Right Brain Initiative; he is a frequent panelist for arts and culture grants and a regular speaker for symposia with civic, education and arts and cultural organizations.