Exhibits put focus on photographers

By Victoria Gail-White
Advertiser Art Critic

•	In Focus: A Hawaii Photography Invitational 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays 1-4 p.m. Sundays Through Jan. 11 Gallery 3 Honolulu Academy of Arts 532-8701

The first exhibit, "In Focus: A Hawaii Photography Invitational," showcases 18 Hawaii-based photographers, selected and juried by collectors Cherye and James Pierce. The exhibit includes portraits, landscapes, photographic collages, studio pieces and fantastic images.

Wayne Levin, Franco Salmoiraghi, Shuzo Uemoto and David Ulrich share their expertise and shine a light on what is achievable above and below the surface.

Levin's "Circling Akule, Keala-Kekua Bay, Hawai'i" is a cyclone-like circle of fish in a beautiful underwater ballet of energy and light. Salmoiraghi's "Her Person," a photo of a partially exposed female nude wrapped and tied in butcher paper like a hunk of meat, has sociopolitical overtones.

Uemoto's "Haole Koa-Lanikai" is a soft, feathery image of the grasses and branches of haole koa. Combining photographic and computer techniques, this image was iris ink-jet printed on gampi paper (a fibrous ivory colored paper with a ragged edge).

Also displaying ink-jet prints, Ulrich's diptych photographs "Map, Sugar Plantation 1917, Baldwin Home, Makawao, Maui, Hawai'i" and "Imported 19th Century Piano, Baldwin Home, Makawao, Hawai'i," artfully focus on the details in historical documentation.

Emerging photographers Kanani Aiu and Cade Roster share a sense of the profound. For Aiu it is in the mesmerizing eyes of the child in her silver gelatin print "Sateen" and for Roster it is in his contrived tableaus made of carved alien-like figures with found objects in his color print "Stupid transit issues ... again."

Jan Becket, Linny Morris Cunningham, Sergio Goes, Tom Haar, Mark Hamasaki, Paul Kodama, Kapulani Landgraf, R. Chiu Leong, Hal Lum, Annie Rogers, Joseph Singer and Stan Tomita round out the exhibit with a wide variety of exquisite styles and subjects.

Film curator Ann Brandman says she selected films that "were not just straight-on documentaries but also showed the creative process" for some of this century's greatest American photographers. Beginning at 4 p.m. today, the Doris Duke Theatre will show "Strand: Under Dark Cloth" and "Manhatta," a short film by Strand and Charles Sheeler.

Also on the roster are films about Edward S. Curtis, Lewis Hine, Todd Webb, Dorothea Lange and more. "Film is the extension of the medium of photography," says Brandman. "It is, after all, the moving image."

For more information, call 532-8768.

The second exhibit, "In Celebration of Light: Photographs from the Collection of Cherye R. and James F. Pierce" will be reviewed later in the month.

In the meantime, a lecture by these collectors titled "What's in the Closet: An Inside Look at the Pierce Collection" is scheduled for today at 2 p.m.

For a complete schedule of lectures, films and exhibits you can also visit www.honoluluacademy.org.