SPECIAL PREVIEW FOR SUPER SABADO!!!
SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 12pm – 4pm
B&W
Two Photographers
April 25 – May 27, 2013
Gallery Hours: Friday, Saturday, 3pm – 6pm
and by appointment
MediaNoche
1355 Park Avenue, Corner Store — Entrance on 102nd Street
New York City
info@medianoche.us
212.828.0401
The world occurs in color, not black and white. People forget that B&W photography was a technical necessity or limitation before it became an aesthetic or stylistic choice with its own signifiers. They forget how startling it was to see the world as a continuum of black and white, along a scale of beautiful, interpretive tones and shades of gray.
B&W: Two Photographers, provides a view of what photography was for the Pentax generation of yesterday and what it still is and can be for today’s generation. MediaNoche presents the past and present work of Maximo Colon and Elisa Perea in order to drive home a point: Celluloid photography is alive and well. While digital photography dominates as an economic medium for graphical manipulation, celluloid maintains a strong presence in artistic practice.
Four decades of work, beginning in the sixties, cycles through a video wall drawing from the exhaustive collection of photography by Maximo Colon who has devoted the past half century of his life exploring themes relevant to Latinos here and there: Their politics, their children, and their music. Latino icons such as Lolita Lebron and Salvador Allende are juxtaposed with children at play in Spanish Harlem or Jimmy Bosch in concert.
In contrast to these works and speaking softly to their documentary feel, are the “retro” photographs of Elisa Perea. While her contemporaries are seduced by the immediacy and ease of the digital, Perea remains true to celluloid. Everyday places and things are rendered with an ethereal, otherworldly softness. Even the most hard-edged among them, reveal another world order– that of the artist’s gentle and at times quirky gaze.
B&W may have been a technologoical necessity at the time of its birth, but here, at MediaNoche, in the present, it asserts itself as photography’s undisputable domain.
PHOTOGRAPHER BIOS
Maximo Rafael Colon was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico and raised in New York City. His photographs have appeared in numerous books, journals, and documentary films. Recent exhibitions: NY Photo Festival 2011, and the upcoming Devoción, May 2013.
Maximo studied photography at the School of Visual Arts. maximorafaelcolon.com
Elisa Perea was born in Nogales, Mexico where she studied art. She produced a documentary on Border Art in 2005, featuring the artists of Nogales. She works in film and video. Elisa currently resides in New York City. norteada.com
ABOUT MEDIANOCHE
MediaNoche is the place where art, technology and community converge. We offer artists working in new media exhibition space and residencies in order to provoke a dialogue that blurs all lines of marginality and alterity. Unique among art and technology groups, MediaNoche is directly linked to the oldest Latino community of New York City, Spanish Harlem, and has showcased a roster of local and international new media
artists.
MediaNoche is a project of PRdream.com and is supported in part with funding from the New York State Council of the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and private donors. Special thanks: Hugh Mandeville, Kenneth Bowler, Christopher Dascher, Joann Arroyo, Maria Catoni, Allistar Peters, Gus Rosado and Operation Fightback, Inc.
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