John Menapace
Elizabeth Matheson
David Simonton
JoAnn Sieburg-Baker
John Rosenthal
A tribute to NC photographers who inspired us through the Formalism photographic movement of the 70’s, 80’s and beyond.
Formalism centers on how elements are arranged within the frame, including their placement, relationships, and the use of the frame itself. Focusing on composition, lines, shapes, tones, and textures to portray subjects as they are, Formalism pursues an objective approach.
Oct 17 - Nov 17 Open to Public View
Fri, Oct 17 3rd Friday Celebration 6 - 9pm
Sun, Oct 26 Artist Reception 2 - 4pm
Photograph: John Menapace
John Menapace (1927–2010) was a fine art photographer and educator who spent much of his career in North Carolina; in the early 70s, Menapace began to teach photography at Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Penland School of Crafts. In 1984, the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh put on their first show devoted solely to photography with Menapace’s work. An exhibit was later held at North Carolina State University’s the Gregg Museum of art in 2006, which subsequently led to the publishing of a book based on the show titled With Hidden Noise. His photographs have also been exhibited posthumously—in 2014, the Gregg Museum of Art hosted his work once more as a major retrospective of his images.
Photograph: David Simonton
David Simonton (b. 1953) is a documentary artist based in Raleigh, NC. After relocating to the Oak City in 1989, Simonton began focusing his camera on small towns and has now photographed in more than 365 cities, towns, and rural communities across North Carolina. Simonton is a self-taught photographer who employs slow-speed film with his medium format camera to create black and white images in creating his quiet vignettes. Publications like Photography Quarterly, The Photo Review, and The Southern Quarterly: A Journal of the Arts in the South have all featured Simonton’s images. His work is held in the collections of the North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh); the George Eastman Museum (Rochester, NY); the Asheville Art Museum; and the Cassilhaus Collection (Chapel Hill, NC), to name a few.
Photograph: Elizabeth Matheson
Elizabeth Matheson (b. 1942) is a prominent North Carolina photographer. The Hillsborough native has authored numerous books including To See; Blithe Air: Photographs of England, Wales, and Ireland; and Shell Castle, Portrait of a North Carolina House. She received her BA from Sweet Briar College and studied alongside the renowned John Menapace at Penland School of Crafts. Matheson received a North Carolina Award in 2004 for Excellence in the Arts, the state’s highest honor that can be bestowed upon civilians. One-person exhibitions of her work include Hollins University (Hollins, VA); Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA); the North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh, NC); Duke University (Durham, NC); Western Carolina University (Cullowhee, NC); the National Humanities Center (Research Triangle Park, NC); and the Gregg Museum at North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC). In 2022 and 2023, Uncommon, a retrospective, covering 50 years of work, was shown at Cassilhaus and traveled to Upstairs, Artspace in Tryon, NC. Matheson’s photographs can be found in the collections of several North Carolina-based institutions and is often described as bringing a stillness or meditative perspective to the viewer, highlighting a sense of beauty within the order of everyday places.
Photograph: John Rosenthal
John Rosenthal (b. 1942) was born in New York City. He received his B.A. from Wake Forest College in 1964, and an M.A. in English Literature from Columbia University in 1966. He taught English at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill until 1971 when he left teaching to become an essayist and a photographer. His work has been widely exhibited in the United States, including exhibitions at The National Humanities Center, The National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C., and Boston’s Panopticon Gallery. His articles have appeared in many journals and magazines, amongst them The Sun Magazine, Five Points and The Huffington Post. In 1998 a collection of Mr. Rosenthal’s photographs, Regarding Manhattan, was published by Safe Harbor Books, and in 2015 Safe Harbor published his 2007 collection of New Orleans photographs, AFTER: The Silence of the Lower 9th Ward. In the 1990s, Mr. Rosenthal was a regular commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered.
Photograph: JoAnn Sieburg-Baker
JoAnn Sieburg-Baker is an interdisciplinary artist with a core practice in photography. She has won seven international awards, including the Photography Masters Cup International Color Awards Nominee Title– twice, the Prix de la Photographie Paris 2008 Honorable Mention Award, and the Black and White Spider Awards Nominee Title - three times. In addition to publishing two books, her photographs are represented in numerous public and private collections including the Mint Museum of Art, the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, and the North Carolina Museum of Art.