SHARING THE SUBLIME:

Photography is about connection and communication.  It is about an experience that an artist is attempting to share with a greater audience, those of like-mind and at common odds, whether by absurdist irony or realist approach.  As Ansel Adams would say, “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs.”

When looking at a photograph by Anne Larsen or John Sexton, I am immediately transported to an emphatic place of quiet light; there is a familiarity and fellowship with each subject regardless of its whereabouts or any notion of its prior existence.  The darkest aspen forests glow, ice playfully masquerades as a sea of cumulus clouds, and the dazzling morning sun scattered through fog is shrouding.  I feel connected, focused and welcome.

So then why all of this discussion of communication?  Such a thing may be undefinable in the temporal sense, but as John Szarkowski has said of fine photographic work, it is akin to great “lines of poetry, [that] grasp us, grips us, and you think: ‘That’s right, that’s true. I don’t know quite what that [poem] means, but whatever it means it’s true.’  And a good picture does something like that.”  Embedded in the nature of the medium, from making a negative, to developing it, to sharing and seeing it, to collecting it or revisiting it years later, there is a consistent theme of revelation about what has genuine meaning to oneself.

Emanating from the silver prints by both Anne and John is this tacit notion of truth; of genuine places communicating a sympathetic sublimity that is unique yet somehow universal to us all.

Sharing the Sublime: Photographs by Anne Larsen and John Sexton will open at The Ansel Adams Gallery on November 10th 2023 and run through January 6th 2024.  A reception for the artists will be held on December 16th from 11:00am to 2:00pm.