"Seeing is Believing" opens at the Concord Art Association

Looking at the photography exhibit, Seeing is Believing, it is easy to fool your eye as the work is not straight-on photography.

"It is artists that are employing photography as tool to again fool the eye and give us a different perspective on things," Deborah Plunkett, Concord Art Association public relations director, said of the exhibit. "It is not straight on landscapes."

Indeed, "the exhibit features nine artists who employ photography as a tool to trace the arc of different realities, memory and the various meanings associated with a sense of time, place or identity," according to a press release from the art association.

The artists' whose work is displayed in Seeing is Believing are: Thomas Birtwistle; John Chervinsky; Jim Dow; Andy Freeberg; Cynthia Greig; Pamela Ellis Hawkes; Dave Jordano; Oscar Palacio; and Christopher Sims.

Below is a small description of each artists work:

Birtwistle's work consists of photographs of state fairs in Maine, according to the association's press release. Other than focusing on fairs, his work ranges from "garish stuffed animal prizes, concession stands, to Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein cans riddled with bullet holes."

Chervinsky's work focuses on black and white photographs entitled Experiments in Perspective, which were made in an attic studio, according to the press release. His photographs focus on "visual perception and conflicts between reason and belief."

Dow, in a press release, explained his work: … "My interest in photography centers on its capacity for exact description … I use photography to try to record the manifestations of human ingenuity and spirit still remaining in our country's everyday landscape."

Focusing on objects ranging "from coffee cups to ice cream cones to books," Greig's compositions present "photographic documents of three-dimensional drawings," Greig states in the association press release.

And, "comfortably seated in cavernous galleries installed with priceless paintings in gilded frames, the female figures in Freeberg's Guardians series are the guards assigned to protecting the collections of Russia's most esteemed museums," according to the association press release. The photographs document "the uncanny similarities between the female guards and the spaces in which they sit everyday," according to the release.

In contrast, Hawkes' work consists of "complicated still life arrangements that resist clear-cut visual interpretation," according to the association, as they are set against a black background "occupied by both two and three-dimensional objects."'

Focusing on the abandoned Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul, Ill., another artist, Jordano, focuses his images on the base's decay and deterioration, which was closed a decade ago, and affected the economy in Rantoul.

Like Jordano, Sims' work is inspired from "access to our military bases," according to the association. In a series entitled Theater of War, "Sims makes photographs within fictitious Iraqi and Afghan villages on the training grounds of U.S. Army bases."

And in another series of photographs,"culled from (an) ongoing series entitled History Re-visited," Palacio's photographs" focuses on the "enigmatic disparity that often exists between the monumental historical events that make a site important and what we actually find there," according to the association.

Dana Salvo is the curator of the exhibit and is a Guggenheim Fellow and the author of Home Altars of Mexico. He is also co director of the Clark Gallery in Lincoln.

Plunkett said this exhibit is exciting and presents "unique perspectives on everyday objects we are looking at."

The exhibit runs through Aug. 12 at the association, 37 Lexington Road. Hours are Tuesday-Saturday from 10 to 4:30 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, contact the gallery at (978) 369-2578 or visit the website at www.concordart.org.