QUARTET: Four North Carolina Photographers

Through This Lens Gallery
Opening Oct. 23, 2026
303 East Chapel Hill Street in downtown Durham, North Carolina.

Quartet: Four North Carolina Photographers is a 2005 hardcover photography book published by Safe Harbor Books that showcases the work of four prominent regional photographers. Through This Lens Gallery is pleased to gather these four photographers together for a Quartet inspired exhibition.

Quartet presents a sampling of the work of Rob Amberg, Elizabeth Matheson, John Rosenthal, and Caroline Vaughan. Their images, for the most part made in North Carolina, are both quiet and passionate, in time and outside of time, revealing both surface and depth.

Mr. Amberg documents life in rural, southern communities. Ms. Vaughan's landscapes and portraits detail the increments and textures of time. Ms. Matheson's pictures present the architecture of formality that expresses the character of those who built and lived in such spaces as well as what is past and passing. Mr. Rosenthal’s photographs freeze ordinary moments thereby allowing us to see in them what is extraordinary and permanent.

As Georgann Eubanks notes in her introduction, Quartet presents images "that hum with subtle harmonies, each photographer adding another dimension to the resonant chord, all reminding us that against the din of digital media, there is yet a place for still images and deeper reflection”

ROB AMBERG'S photographs and writings from the rural South have been published and exhibited nationally and internationally in numerous journals, magazines, and galleries. He frequently lectures and does assignment work for non-profit organizations, philanthropic foundations, and editorial publications. He has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Center for Documentary Studies, Alternative Roots, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His book, Sodom Laurel Album, published in 2002 by the University of North Carolina Press and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, won the 2003 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award from the Western Carolina Historical ssociation. He is currently working on a book documenting a nine-mile section of interstate highway recently opened in mountainous Madison County, North Carolina, where he lives with his wife, two children, and an assortment of animals.

Photograph: Rob Amberg

CAROLINE VAUGHAN was educated at Duke University and later studied with John Menapace at the Penland School of Crafts. She was one of only seven students in a graduate seminar at MIT with laster photographer Minor White. Soon thereafter, Ms. Vaughan was nominated by a panel of photographic experts from Europe, North America, and Australia as one of forty-three promising young photographers listed in Time Life's "Photography Year" 1977 edition. Her photographs have been published in numerous magazines, including Camera, Zoom, Aperture, and Parnassus: Poetry in Review. In 1996 Duke University Press published Borrowed Time: Photographs of Caroline Vaughan, a midlife assessment of her work. She is included in Polaroid's comprehensive survey of its collection, the Polaroid Book. She has had solo exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum, the Neikrug Gallery, the Light Factory, the Green Hill Center of North Carolina Art, and Hollins University. Among the museums that collect Ms. Vaughan's works are the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Amon Carter Museum, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and the North Carolina Museum of Art. The Gallery of and Design at North Carolina State University will archive Ms. Vaughan's photography.

Photograph: Caroline Vaughn

ELIZABETH MATHESON was educated at Sweet Briar College and studied photography with John Menapace at the Penland School of Crafts. Her affection for old North Carolina towns and houses is reflected in her books on Edenton and her native Hillsborough (with Jerry Eidenier). Other books include To See with poems of John McFee (Wesleyan University Press, 1991) and Blithe Air: Photographs of England, Wales, and Ireland (Jargon Society Press, 1995). She has had solo exhibitions at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Hollins University, Western Carolina University, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the National Humanities Center, the Gallery of Art and Design at North Carolina State University and, most recently, Cassilhaus. In 2003 she was included in the Ackland Art Museum's "Defining Moments, Two Centuries of Photography." In 2004 she received the North Carolina Governor's Award in Fine Arts.

Photograph: Elizabeth Matheson

JOHN ROSENTHAL’S photographs have been exhibited throughout North Carolina and the Southeast. His one-person shows include exhibits at the National Humanities Center, the Asheville Museum of Art, the National Academy of Sciences, the NIH, and the Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art, as well as Wake Forest University, Elon University, Salem College, Hollins University, and the School of Design at North Carolina State University. His essays and photography have appeared in various journals and periodicals, including ARTVU, Five Points, Carolina Quarterly, Sun Magazine, Key West Review, Kenyon Review, NCArts, New York Magazine, Arts Journal, and In Brief, Short Takes on the Personal. Mr. Rosenthal has written and lectured widely on his own work and the work of others, including presentations at the City Gallery of Contemporary Art, the Weatherspoon Art Gallery, and the North Carolina Museum of Art. He has served as a visiting lecturer at Duke University's Institute of the Arts. In 2003 Mr. Rosenthal provided the narration and eighty-five photographs for the Morrison Project, winner of the Best Documentary at the 2003 Hamptons International Film Festival. In 1985 Mr. Rosenthal began his career as a radio commentator on WUNC-FM, an affiliate of NPR. In 1990 he joined the roster of commentators on All Things Considered. In 1998 Safe Harbor Books published Mr. Rosenthal's collection Regarding Manhattan.

Photograph: John Rosenthal