The University Art Gallery at Sonoma State University is pleased to announce its next exhibition, "The Big Picture: Contemporary Large-Scale Photography," which is now on view through Sunday, March 20.
The exhibit includes an international roster of artists who, each in their own way, have explored the power and impact of oversized photographic images: James Casebere (New York); Stephane Couturier (Paris); Christoph Draeger (New York); Doug Hall (San Francisco); Todd Hido (Oakland); Alfredo Jaar (New York); Nicholas Nixon (Cambridge, Massachusetts); Larry Schwarm (Emporia, Kansas); Larry Sultan (Greenbrae, CA); Catherine Wagner (San Francisco) and Michael Wolf (Hong Kong).
The current trend among a number of contemporary photographers to work large is the result of a number of factors, the primary one being the increasing availability of new technology - originally developed for billboards and other signs - that makes such big prints possible, says Michael Schwager, director of the SSU gallery.
The scope of the artists' vision in "The Big Picture" ranges from Stephane Couturier's exploration of the layers of change in urban areas in cities such as Paris, Dresden, and Berlin to Larry Sultan's documentation of the adult film industry in the San Fernando Valley and Michael Wolf's mesmerizing images of high-rise apartment buildings in Hong Kong.
Visitors to the exhibition will see Christoph Draeger's appropriated images of natural and man-made disasters printed large-scale on jigsaw puzzles, Larry Schwarm's almost abstract photographs of Kansas prairie fires, and Catherine Wagner's pictures of molecular models.
Gallery hours are Tuesday-Friday, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m., and weekends, noon-4 p.m. It is closed on Mondays and holidays. For more information, call (707) 664-2295 or e-mail carla.stone@sonoma.edu
ABOVE: Michael Wolf's image of high-rise apartment building in Hong Kong.
