THE GALLERY AT STUDIO IX PRESENTS
STREET LIFE / STILL LIFE:
Photographs by Will Kerner
Opening Reception / Friday, February 7th, 5-7PM
Exhibit dates / Feb 7 - March 2
Gallery Hours / M-F, 8-4, Sat & Sun 8-2
Artist Talk / Thursday, February 27th, 5-6PM
Will Kerner 2024
About the exhibit
Across this body of work, my unifying axiom is a search for balance and stillness amidst chaos.
In the vibrant setting of a marketplace in New Delhi, I’m looking to balance multiple formal elements at once: color, light, composition, and content. I love the challenge of working in such a chaotic, rapidly changing environment. I must simultaneously pay attention to all that is happening around me when composing a frame, and then wait for the elements to come together. I’m looking for imagery that will pull the viewer into the world where the photograph was made. Questions about the material elements of the picture – people, their clothing, their expressions and gestures — combine with the geometry of inanimate objects to create an engaging, intriguing image in which multiple narratives might unfold.
In the Moss hut series, I explored a deteriorated manor house in the Azorean forest. In these reflective photographs, ordered architectural elements succumb to apparently chaotic natural energies. I delight in the mystery of this enigmatic structure covered with moss, lichen, mildew, and wild plant life. The graffiti reveals a human desire to leave a mark on an abandoned place, though it will soon be completely overwritten by the natural world.
These two divergent bodies of work represent two aspects of my practice in image making: the contemplative and the active. I relish both as they stretch and energize me in different ways.
About the artist
I have been a professional photographer for over 40 years, after earning a B.F.A. in Photography and Filmmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute. Throughout my career I have traveled and photographed extensively in over60 countries across Asia, Africa, South America and Europe. I have served as mission photographer for Operation Smile in Honduras, Kenya, Vietnam, Paraguay and Brazil, and as mission photographer for Building Goodness Foundation in Guatemala and Haiti. In these situations it was my responsibility to document the work and to tell the stories of those who benefited from the missions’ work.
Since 1990 I have supported myself by photographing weddings, events and doing portraiture. Concurrently, I co-founded three non profit organizations in Charlottesville: Live Arts, Light House Studio, and LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph. From its inception in 1990 until 1995, I served first as Executive Director of Live Arts and then as Executive Producer from1995-2000. I was on the Board of Directors from 2010-2016. I served as President of the Board of Light House from 1999-2006.
During the whole of its existence, from 2007 until 2016, I worked actively with LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph as a founder, producer, and board member.
In my personal work, I’ve explored street, landscape, and still life photography. Exhibitions have included work from, among other countries, India, Nepal, Tibet, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Iceland, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Morocco.