Reception, Thursday, October 3, 2024, 6PM to 9PM

-Men and Giants (Des hommes et des géants): Bertrand Desprez

Men and giants   They dance under the skirts of their giants, observing the world through a small opening, these balancing carriers play with gravity. Whirling in the heart of the crowd captivated by these immense characters straight from the past. Giant bearers appear with the creation of giants. This is a real challenge when we know that giants can weigh up to 130 kilos. Each giant is accompanied by its group of carriers who take turns to move it forward or dance. In the 19th century, porters were recruited from working-class circles. The Gayant de Douai (the largest) was created in 1530 by the corporation of basket makers. Giants appear in urban religious processions in Western European cities from the end of the 14th century or the beginning of the 15th century. Founding giant, warrior or representative of a small trade, animal or marginal, giants of the mine or the coast, giant of Flanders Their mysterious origins lead to daydreaming. Because these wicker bellies make young and old dream, they exorcise sorrows and torments, with the support, sometimes of a colorful escort. There are nearly 300 of them in the Hauts de France region. Out of the workshops of giant factors, a profession in danger of disappearing. Basket makers and moulders, they work with wicker for the structure and molding for the head. Magical and spectacular, the Giants symbolize the soul of a city united in the same jubilation, each one considering the Giants with the tenderness that we devote to our ancestors, the common part of a long history. Childhood games are not far away, a form of freedom during a procession or a carnival. We make faces, we hide, we play at scaring each other. I was born on July 9, Gayant's feast day in Douai in Hauts de France. On my third birthday, I was sick and my grandmother managed to bring the Gayants over to dance in front of her window. Men and giants is a bit of my story.

-Portraits: Fred Beaujeu-Dufour

Fred Beaujeu-Dufour is a French American photographer based out of Clinton, a small town in eastern North Carolina. He specializes in environmental portraiture. Always walking with either his digital or medium format camera, he stops people and asks them if he can take their portraits. This body of work is an example of his work over the last five years.

-November 6 to December 22, 2024

Reception, Thursday, November 7, 2024, 6PM to 8PM

-Transcending Perspectives: Journey in Times, Parsons School of Design, The New School

The artists in this exhibition unveil visions that reside in the realm of the extraordinary. Their works subtly emerge, as if from the periphery of our vision, beckoning insistently for our undivided attention and discerning gaze. Brought into the sharp relief of clarity, these images unfold their once veiled meanings. They reside in a space that is both known and otherworldly, straddling the line between the familiar and the foreign. These photographs dwell in the ambiguous terrain that blurs reality and imagination, consciousness, and dreams, charting a course through the overtly known to the covert, the suppressed, or the intimately dreamt to reveal certain truths. This exhibition was curated from current students, recent alumni and faculty from the MFA Photography Program at Parsons School of Design in New York City.

-Parsons School of Design, The New School  

A pioneer in art and design education for more than a century, Parsons School of Design is one of the most prestigious and comprehensive colleges of art and design in the world. Critical thinking, collaboration, and reflective practice are at the heart of a Parsons education. Located in the heart of New York City, the school offers undergraduate and graduate programs in the full spectrum of design disciplines. A student-centered curriculum allows for both focused and interdisciplinary learning to master concepts, technologies, and research methods that cut across a wide array of fields. By synthesizing theory with craft, and combining art and design studies with the liberal arts and business, Parsons prepares its students to shape scholarship in their field and make art and design that matters. Its faculty of notable artists, design practitioners, critics, historians, writers, and scholars exemplifies an extraordinary breadth of vision.   The graduate Photography program functions as a 21st-century studio and think tank. The goal of the 26-month program is to prepare graduates to define the creative role of photography within contemporary culture, as practicing artists and scholars. Challenging participants to move beyond current paradigms—to anticipate and set trends, rather than follow them. A rigorous critique process and regular meetings with faculty, professional artists, and visiting critics help students develop individual points of view and situate themselves and their work within larger historical, theoretical, and contemporary visual contexts.     The BFA in Photography program offers students the opportunity to create multiple bodies of work. Students are challenged both technically and conceptually as they develop their skills through the exploration of analog and digital technology. The goal is to provide students with the visual, technical, conceptual, and professional vocabulary necessary to succeed in their field. Students sharpen their focus by pursuing a specific concentration, gaining technical mastery and deep knowledge of their area of interest. Concentrations include Fashion, Fine Art, Social Documentary, Commercial/Editorial and Photographic Technologies.

-Marko Risovic: Last Day of School

Last day of school is a narrative dealing with the issue of depopulation in the Balkans, structured through insight into intimate spaces of young people growing up in this region.  The identification of a problem of such a magnitude starts in abandoned and dilapidated schools, where there are still traces of life struggling to survive with persistence and firmness of a flower on a rock, but also with its vulnerability.

-January 8 to February 2, 2025

Reception, Thursday January 9, 2025, 6pm to 8PM

-Michael Alvis, Hidden in Plain Sight, Roadside Attractions

Many people have the goal of photographing beautiful iconic places that they’ve seen in travel guidebooks, on social media, or printed in coffee table books. I, too, have been guilty of making such photographs, but I prefer to explore the back roads, avoid the obvious, investigate narrow alleys, in order to uncover things that are overlooked, forgotten, and even unappealing to some people. I find a certain “wabi-sabi” beauty in the mishmash, hodgepodge, and confused jumble of things decorating decayed walls and neglected buildings. I’m talking about the kind of visual clutter a person typically avoids at all costs in a photograph because it would detract from a stereotypical or clichéd postcard image. What is unsightly to some viewers may appeal to other people in a completely different light. There can also be beauty in the decay of places and the “accidental art” that is discovered; I hope these images draw you in to observe what you weren’t expecting. This exhibition is a small sample of photographs made in Japan & the USA from my long-term Roadsides Attraction series.

-Portrait Assignment; The Wilson Camera Club; 01.08.2025 - 02.02.2025

The Wilson Camera Club has 70 members practicing photography at various levels from enlightened amateurs to  professional photographers who make a daily living with photography. The American Center for Photographers has assigned the club to create an exhibition of b/w portraits to open the new year as a way to stimulate creativity among its members. Furthermore, many portraits represent local personalities so the subject matter should be very popular among our visitors.

-March 5 to March 30, 2025

-John Anderson, Coming Home - The Beautiful Game at Meadow Lane

For seven years I have been photographing the gathering of the local community to support the oldest football league club in the world – Notts County. As a child I loved matchday - the emotion, the drama, the magic and the sense of belonging. For me, football can represent a coming together, finding an escape from the mundane and even occasional moments of the sublime, This is what I have returned to as an adult – to endeavour to capture all of this, and to rediscover a sense of wonder, belonging and connection.

-Scott Strazzante, Baseball's Last Dive Bar

Scott Strazzante offers a unique and intimate perspective of the final decade of A’s games at the storied Oakland Coliseum. Strazzante captured the emotions of the fans and the essence of a ballpark that has seen countless unforgettable moments and the enduring spirit of a team that has become synonymous with Oakland pride. Each photograph is a testament to the magic of baseball, the vibrant culture of the A's, and the raw beauty of a stadium that has been a witness to both triumph and heartache. Through these images, Strazzante allows viewers to experience the Coliseum not just as a venue, but as a living, breathing entity, brimming with history and emotion.

-April 2,2025 to April 27, 2025

-Stephen Shames, A Lifetime in Photography

I have been a photographer for more than five decades. I traversed five continents, witnessing tragedy and triumph. Much of my photography is about children and families in distress with a focus on identity and family: what tears us apart and binds us together—violence and abuse, but also sensuality, love, hope, and transcendence. I try to convey pure emotion in my pictures, to get behind the scenes, to find a different angle so my pictures reveal what is beneath the surface. Having a distinct vision allows a photographer to be more poetic. While my work fits into the documentary tradition, it is also about the edges of experience, where things are more ambiguous and non rational: the inner moments, where public events meet our private fears and hopes. 

-April 30 to May 25, 2025

-France Leclerc, The Streets of the World 

I am a street and documentary photographer from Québec, Canada, living in Chicago.  I have always been fascinated by the “world” and curious about its diversity, challenges, and the resilience of human beings.  In this series, my goal is to capture beautiful moments showing how people live, eat, dress, interact, celebrate, pray, love… and the “streets” provide countless opportunities to find these moments.

-Jenna Mulhall-Brereton, Sacred/Sagrado: Festivals of Mexico

Since 2011, Jenna Mulhall-Brereton has traveled to various communities to witness and document traditions that are part of the fabric of Mexican culture. The term “sacred” invokes two distinct definitions: that which is holy and that which is a cherished part of the life of a community. Though all the festivals photographed tie back in some way to the religious calendar (Mardi Gras, after all, is the day before Lent), only about half of them celebrate the deeply held beliefs of the Catholic faith. Other images portray a profound sense of tradition, identity, and community that is every bit as intensely felt.

-May 31 to July 31, 2025

-Eyes on Wilson, the Indoor Residency Exhibition

The indoor residency exhibition will consist of roughly 400 photographs shot by 68 photographers from 18 different countries. This will be the ultimate residency exhibition as the whole 11th edition will be made of 500 photographs in total. This will be a time capsule made between 2027 and 2024 showing how Historic Downtown Wilson has evolved through the years and is now ready for a whole new chapter.

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