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Pamela Siemon 203.263.3449

ARMED WITH A TOY PLASTIC CAMERA, ARTIST EXAMINES POSTINDUSTRIAL AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOODS THROUGH 28 YEARS OF DINER AND AMERICAN ROADSIDE IMAGERY

Woodbury, CT - Fenn Gallery kicks off its second season with “Places Remembered; A Multimedia Retrospective on Diners and the American Roadside”, by the artist Jeffrey Bishop. The show runs from Thursday, April 6th - Sunday, May 14, 2006. The Artist Reception will be from 4-6 pm on Saturday, April 8th, and is open to the public.

Since 1978, Bishop has surveyed the expanse of postindustrial American neighborhoods with the blunt candor of his lens. This exhibition features over 25 black & white photographs, along with a selection of new paintings and full value drawings. Using iconography such as vacant streets, intersections, railroad
crossings and diners, along with the immediate neighborhoods and the people who inhabit them, his oeuvre serves as a brilliant portrait of this facet of the American landscape.

Bishop shoots his subjects in the tradition of 1950/1960 street photographers like Robert Frank, who pioneered the development of the “snapshot aesthetic”. His photos are straight forward, unedited observations which capture the beauty inherent in the most common of places; the glimmer of sunlight on stainless steel or a street light’s glow.

The work also address the struggle for sense of security and belonging in our postindustrial society. The diner is one of the few institutions remaining that is a neighborhood joint as well as a welcome place for a transient population; where you can talk to the stranger next to you without feeling that it is an invasion of
privacy. And they are fast disappearing from the American landscape. His shots chronicle the diner from glistening and new, to well worn but cozy, to abandoned. Several images of Connecticut diners in the show have since been torn down.

Many photos were taken with a toy plastic camera called the “Diana”. The aberrations inherent in the simple plastic lens cause a certain loss of detail, and soft focus. The results are nostalgic, dreamy shots that are imbued with a sense of places and things remembered in that moment before sleep. The aged quality of the images accentuates the quietness of urban neighborhoods which
were formerly hubs for friends, family and community. A lone boy rides his bicycle home at dusk across railroad tracks, in another, an elderly man with a cane crosses an empty street. Bishop studied photography at Ohio State University and received his B.A. from Charter Oak College in New Britain, CT.