Mist - Gene Bagdonas
HUW DAVIES GALLERY 5 –22 November
When coincidence is met by an inquisitive, open mind the results can be miraculous. The history of photography is peppered with serendipitous moments leading to technical discoveries, or an occasional flash of inspiration that moves an artist in new creative directions.
Gene Bagdonas drifted away from pragmatic documentation into the world of Pictorialism by immersing himself in the work and innovative practices of the masters of landscape photography. There he began to see different possibilities for his own work. A significant result of that shift is 'Mist', Gene Bagdonas’ first solo exhibition.
From the mid 1880s the Pictorialists strived to create images that were more than straight photographs. Their images were carefully crafted impressions using filters or lens coatings, or heavily manipulated darkroom prints. Their dreamy interpretations of subjects paralleled the Impressionists and genre painters whose work was fashionable at the time.
Discovering historical photographic processes at the ANU School of Art introduced Bagdonas to the technical means to translate his new interests into the transcendent images shown in Mist. His introduction to and RMIT Honours work with the Ziatype, a contemporary process building on the traditional, was a further very important development influencing his work.
It was a discovery by Richard Sullivan—a photographer with a career background in information technology—little more than a decade ago that gave us the Ziatype. Begun part time by Sullivan and his wife in 1980, Bostick and Sullivan is a firm dedicated to materials for fine art photography. According to Sullivan the Ziatype was developed because he was looking for a way to control colour and contrast in palladium printing processes. The explanation he offers at bostick-sullivan.com suggests he may have experienced one or more of those serendipitous moments along the way.
Like Richard Sullivan, Gene Bagdonas has a background in information technology. Whether it’s a reaction to the clinical, logical processes involved in that industry or because of it, we can be grateful Sullivan and Bagdonis found one another. PhotoAccess and the HUW DAVIES GALLERY have not seen work like this before.
These are beautifully made images, carefully composed, full of mood and nuance. Wispy fronds and branches, bright bursts of light, solid black tree trunks. Graduated light filtering through trees or bouncing off water. All of these elements come together to make 'Mist' a memorable first solo exhibition for Gene Bagdonas, one we are delighted to share with visitors to the HUW DAVIES GALLERY in the Manuka Arts Centre.
David Chalker
