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Throckmorton Fine Art is pleased to offer an exhibition of photography portraying the stark
beauty of deserts. In some photographs shown, the desert itself is the subject. In others, the
desert frames such subjects as the female nude. What brings the desert to the fore—drawing
the attention of so many talented photographers—is its brilliant, even over-powering, light.
Photography is sometimes said to be “all about light.” Nowhere is this assertion truer than in
the desert. Indeed, there is so much light in the desert that it is an obstacle for photographers.
Successful images are elusive. However, when success is achieved, the resulting image is
sublime. The surface of objects, from jagged rocks to prickly cactus to soft flesh, just
shimmers.
The exhibit includes the work of a number of photographers who have been attracted to
deserts: Edward, Brett, and Cole Weston, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Martin Chambi, Lucien
Clergue, Elisabeth Sunday, Dirk McDonnell, and Marilyn Bridges. Photographs in the exhibit
range from the early part of the twentieth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Despite the variety of images included in the exhibit, they are united by more than their
setting in the deserts of North and South America, and North Africa. The powerful light of
the desert makes for bold contrasts, giving every photograph, even those of the human figure,
an abstract quality—and so an aura of modernism.
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