Berkeley Art Center: Of Dreams and Reality

Berkeley Art Center features dreamily real photographs from longstanding Bay Area art collective.
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 15, 6-8 pm
Exhibition Dates: September 15 - October 25, 2018

Berkeley Art Center (BAC) is proud to present, Of Dreams and Reality, an exhibition of work from the Bay Area Photographers Collective (BAPC) curated by Ann Jastrab, editor-in-chief of All About Photo. Of Dreams and Reality features work by 17 of members of the Collective: Rose Borden, Adrienne Defendi, Anthony Delgado, Gene Dominique, Dan Fenstermacher, Linda Fitch, Steve Goldband & Ellen Konar, Ralf Hillebrand, Ken Hoffman, Tom Lavin, Mitch Nelles, Ari Salomon, Angelika Schilli, Cindy Stokes, Denise Tarantino and Nick Winkworth.

In this exhibition interweaving dreamscapes and documentary, soft and surreal images of photographers like Adrienne Defendi and Rose Borden blur the line between fantasy and reality, while images of artists like Dan Fenstermacher and Ralf Hildebrand offer astute yet sensitive journalistic portrayals of street life. The exhibition will also include a slideshow of images that reflect on the dreams and the reality of life in Puerto Rico this past summer, almost a year following the devastation of the 2017 Hurricane Maria.

Curator Ann Jastrab reflects on how she came to the exhibition theme Of Dreams and Reality. I often take my son to a nearby forest to climb on fallen tree trunks and build forts with branches and sticks. Or, we head to the Pacific to dig holes so deep the water seeps in through the bottom. We stay well past sunset, when there is a sense of utter peace and calm. Is this reality or a dream? The conflation of reality and dreams is as apparent in much of what we think of as fine art photography as in life itself. In this exhibit of the work of the Bay Area Photographers Collective, I explicitly juxtapose the two views. Whether dream-like or realistic, the images in Of Dreams and Reality offer keen observation with heart.

In addition to viewing the exhibition, there will be an opportunity for visitors to contribute to a stronger, self-sufficient and resilient Puerto Rico as the 2018 hurricane season approaches. The BAPC is hosting a raffle for a signed work by Frank Espada, the renowned documentary photographer and activist whose work on the Puerto Rican Diaspora is held by the Smithsonian Institution and other museums around the country. Espada also happens to be a founding member of the BAPC. Funds received from the raffle as well as a portion of exhibition print and catalogue sales will be donated to support the life-sustaining and rebuilding projects of the Foundation of Puerto Rico, in keeping with Espada's passion for social justice, equality and education in this country and the island of his birth.

About Bay Area Photographers Collective
The Bay Area Photographers Collective (BAPC), is a community of photographers dedicated to nurturing members' artistic and professional growth through activities including peer critiques, portfolio reviews, exhibitions, and programs. Members' photographic subjects and processes range widely and are rooted in several Bay Area hallmarks - from documentary and street photography informed by the area's social activism, to finely crafted prints a la Group f/64, to digital image-making empowered by Silicon Valley's high technology. BAPC engages professional curators to produce one or more exhibits of members' work each year. In 2018, BAPC made its international exhibition debut at the PHOTO YOKOHAMA Festival in Japan. BAPC is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in 1999 by a group of SF Bay Area photographers, led by documentary photographer, teacher and activist Frank Espada. It is wholly supported and run by its members. www.bapc.photo.

About Berkeley Art Center
Since 1967, Berkeley Art Center has been exhibiting advanced work by Bay Area artists in a range of disciplines and media, while hosting varied educational and public programs. From its inception, BAC's programs have reflected Berkeley's courageous stand for civil rights and powerful influence in our country's political and cultural movements. Today, Berkeley Art Center continues to inspire community and cultural change by supporting new artistic work and opportunities for self-expression. Berkeley Art Center's exhibitions and programs are supported by the City of Berkeley, Alameda County Arts Commission, the East Bay Fund for Artists and our members. Underwriting for the Opening Reception is courtesy of The Mechanics Bank.

BERKELEY ART CENTER
1275 Walnut Street
Berkeley, CA 94709

Cedric Roux: Before Rebirth

By Cedric Roux

Publisher : ODYSSEE

2024 | 96 pages

Empty storefronts dot the downtown, while massive brick tobacco warehouses stretch the length of city blocks—abandoned and awaiting creative reuse. Wilson, North Carolina, feels frozen in the 1970s. Invited by the Eye on Main Street festival, photographer Cedric Roux made several trips to this enigmatic town. For a photographer used to capturing the vibrant energy of New York City streets—his first book, My Wonderland (now sold out), vividly chronicled the bustling metropolis—his initial encounter with Wilson was a profound shock.

Expecting a town in the midst of a vibrant renaissance, Roux wandered Wilson daily, exploring its diverse areas: downtown, affluent suburbs, and struggling neighborhoods. On either side of the railroad tracks that symbolically and socially divide the city, he sought a light that might suggest an emerging revival..

In his latest book, Before Rebirth, Roux captures this sense of disconnection, using his lens to explore a promise not yet realized. With a population of just 47,000, Wilson is a far cry from Manhattan’s 1.5 million. Used to the dense human energy that fuels his photographic style, Roux found himself reimagining his approach. His work took on a more stripped-down, documentary aesthetic, yet it remains deeply rooted in place and retains the distinctive palette and framing that define his vision..

In collaboration with artistic director Jean-Matthieu Gautier, Roux drew from his imagination and visual archives to craft a narrative that stays true to his photographic roots while stepping far beyond his usual realm.

All About Cedric Roux

John Divola: San Fernando Valley

By John Divola

Publisher : Nazraeli Press

2024 | 60 pages

From the publisher: San Fernando Valley is where John Divola was born and raised, and it served as both backdrop and subject for his earliest, serious photographic explorations, made during the early 1970s. This previously unpublished body of work shows “the Valley” through the eyes of a young photographer who would soon become an internationally-recognized artist with the exhibition and publication of his much more conceptual “Zuma” series. The black and white photographs in “San Fernando Valley” comprise a series of subject groupings which, pulled together, show early manifestations of the deadpan humor and the ability to capture everyday scenes wrapped in loneliness, for which Divola is now well-known. The book is also, and not incidentally, a fascinating record of a quintessentially 1970s Los Angeles culture. John Divola’s work is the subject of numerous books and catalogues. Widely exhibited and collected throughout the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia, Divola’s photographs are included in the permanent collections of many public and private institutions, including those of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Getty Museum, Los Angeles; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

All About John Divola

Cig Harvey: Emerald Drifters

By Cig Harvey

Publisher : The Monacelli Press

2025 | 224 pages

Following her celebrated monograph Blue Violet (Monacelli, 2021), photographer Cig Harvey continues her personal study of sensory experience, focusing on the ephemeral nature of light, pigment, and vision. Her latest photographs are lush tableaux of her signature subjects – flora, cakes, domestic interiors, and the human figure in landscape – accompanied by prose vignettes on the science and art of color, written in her vibrant, intimate style. Featuring an afterword by award-winning novelist and poet Ocean Vuong, Emerald Drifters is a catalogue of pleasures and heartbreaks, and ‘an urgent call to live.’

All About Cig Harvey

Helmut Newton. Berlin, Berlin

By Helmut Newton

Publisher : Taschen

2025 | 244 pages

Born in Berlin in 1920, Helmut Newton trained as a teenager with legendary photographer Yva, following her lead into the enticing pastures of fashion, portraiture and nudes. Forced to flee the Nazis aged only 18, Newton never left Berlin behind. After his career exploded in Paris in the 1960s, he returned regularly to shoot for magazines like Constanze, Adam, Vogue, Condé Nast's Traveler, ZEITmagazin, Männer Vogue, Max and the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin as well as his own magazine Helmut Newton’s Illustrated. In 1979, the newly relaunched German Vogue commissioned him to retrace the footsteps of his youth to capture the fashion moment. The resulting portfolio, Berlin, Berlin!, inspired the title of the exhibition which celebrates 20 years of the Helmut Newton Foundation. This collection includes Newton’s most iconic Berlin images, as well as many unknown shots from the 1930s to the 2000s: nightcrawlers in uber-cool clubs and restaurants, nude portraits in the boarding houses he knew from his youth, and the Berlin film scene, featuring Hanna Schygulla and Wim Wenders at the Berlin Wall, John Malkovich and David Bowie. In October 2003, only months before his death, Newton moved large parts of his archive to his new foundation, housed in the Museum of Photography beside the Zoologischer Garten station―the very station from which he fled Berlin in the winter of 1938. This publication thus closes a circle in the story of his extraordinary life and work.

Berkeley Art Center: Of Dreams and Reality

Berkeley Art Center

Selected Books