CRAIG J. BARBER - HAVANA PASSAGE

September 22- October 31, 2004

The Robin Rice Gallery announces “Havana Passage,” a solo exhibition of photography by Craig J Barber. The opening reception will be held on Wednesday, September 22nd from 5:30 to 8:30 pm. The show runs through October 31, 2004.

In this exhibition, “Havana Passage,” Barber documents a cultural landscape of a country that seems frozen in time – suspended in 1950’s. Having visited Cuba many times, he is passionate about sharing his visual diary of a place that has been a forbidden mystery. Barber’s photographs preserve the character of a culture in transition – capturing the beauty of urban decay that is Cuba.

Barber built his own panoramic pinhole camera, with a 90-degree field of view, exposing the film up to 20 minutes, and printing contact prints 12” x 20” in platinum/palladium on rag paper. It is the perfect marriage of an earlier technique and a 21st century vision. The absence of a lens, especially when a human figure crosses his field of view, creates a dusting of people, an eerie ghostlike impression. It is reminiscent of an Alfred Hitchcock film, when something odd has just happened right around the corner. In the invitational image, “Juxtaposed,” an old American car stands between decaying colonial buildings, while in the distance stands modern architecture with a mysterious man in the left corner.

Craig J Barber’s work has been exhibited in Europe, Latin America and throughout the United States at many leading museums, such as: the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Brooklyn Art Museum; the Minneapolis Institute of Art; and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has received a number of grants – from the Seattle Arts Commission, the Polaroid Corporation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Barber currently teaches at The International Center of Photography in Manhattan and at the Center for Photography in Woodstock. A native New Yorker, he is presently residing in Woodstock, New York. Barber has been showing at The Robin Rice Gallery since 1991.