This fall, The Project Room at Independent Project Press will be exhibiting the “Alternative Process Photography” prints of local artist and ESLT member, Joe Profita. What’s more,30% of all sale proceeds will benefit Eastern Sierra Land Trust’s conservation work.
Join us thisSaturday, October 15 for the show’s Opening Night Reception and Raffle!
5 – 8 pm @The Project Room (186-A Willow St. in Bishop)
At the reception this weekend, join us forcomplimentary snacks and beverages while wehear from Joeabout his “very old school” printingtechniques.All of hisoriginal photographs on display will be available for purchase.
The Project Room will also be offering copies of Joe Profita’s hand-made photographic accordion-fold books – one of which will be featured in a raffle held that evening, along with prints by Independent Project Press co-owners and ESLT members, Bruce and Karen Licher.
Can’t make it that day? A secondreception will be held at The Project Room on the night of Bishop’s annual Chocolate Art Walk, Saturday October 22.
Joe Profita’s show will run through January 14, 2017. Gallery hours are from 11am – 3pm on Saturdays, or by appointment during the week. To plan your visit, call or email Bruce Licher of Independent Project Press: (760) 873-3600 or .
About The Project Room:
The Project Room at Independent Project Press is located at 186-A Willow Street, just one block east of Main Street, in downtown Bishop. Curated by ESLT members Bruce & Karen Licher, The Project Room hosts periodic exhibitions of artwork, photography, and installations reflecting the diverse creative talents to be found in the Eastern Sierra.
About The Artist:
Many locals already know Joe Profita from his years of teaching chemistry at Bishop High School. Joe retired from teaching a few years ago, but he has definitely not retired from practicing chemistry! Joe continues to work producing enigmatic photographic images, created from the mysterious alchemy of such substances as solutions of platinum, palladium, and iron salts, sodium carbonate and tannic acid.
Joe Profita’s careful hands-on processing and deliberate experimentation combine over time to yield surprising, arresting images of stunning presence, and a timeless quality of light.
Images in this exhibition range from panoramic landscapes to poetic architectural studies, to an interpretive reprinting of one his grandfather’s original film negatives from time served in Europe during the first World War.
In order to produce these images, Joe continues to experiment with finding and creating his own cameras, papers and chemistry. Joe has mastered a range of old schoolprinting techniques, or as he puts it, “very old school.” These techniques involve creating film negatives using a restored 1950’s folding camera, one of his several view cameras, or hand-built pinhole or slit cameras.
Though Joe does continue to produce silver prints using purchased paper and chemistry, he has become enamored with processes hearkening back to the early days of photography:platinum-palladium prints, cyanotypes, and even the little-known method of creating very altered and distressed prints known as mordan√ßage. As Joe puts it, these image-making processes resonate with a time when everything was “made from scratch.”
For moreon Joe Profita’s photographic work, please see his website:www.joeprofita.com.
