The Usual Suspects
A rotating exhibition of works by Through This Lens artists

On display June 20 - August 12, 2008

Opening reception
Friday, July 18, 6:00-9:00 p.m.

The Usual Suspects highlights popular favorites and new works from a number of photographers represented by the gallery. Squirreled away in the back recesses of the framing workshop and printing office, beyond the public gallery space of Through This Lens, are archival print storage boxes. Inside the dozens of boxes are hundreds of photographs by artists who have been afforded exhibitions at the gallery in the past three and a half years. The Usual Suspects is both a showcase of these images that, due to space restrictions, regretfully rarely see the light of day, and an opportunity for the gallery to inform visitors that there are countless original photographs in stock, available for viewing and purchase. The Usual Suspects will be on display June 20 through August 12, 2008. The free artists' reception, with many of the local photographers in attendance, will occur on Third Friday, July 18, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.

The Usual Suspects, unusually, is a rotating exhibition. As Through This Lens owner and director, Roylee Duvall explains, “we decided to have fun this summer by displaying our favorite pictures from previous exhibitions along with a few new works by our favorite photographers. Because there are so many images we want to show, the works on display will change throughout the course of the exhibition.” To address the challenge of creating a cohesive display of the wide range of content and styles represented, Duvall reveals The Usual Suspects “will be organized by theme such as historic merit; visual and intellectual challenge; and the merit of beauty alone.”

The Usual Suspects includes:
D. L. Anderson
Derek Lee Anderson is a freelance photojournalist based in Durham, NC, where he works on staff for the Independent Weekly. Anderson's photographic journey passes through the struggles and fantasies, hardships and dreams of the Mississippi Delta today. His work examines the modern-day cultural landscape in a colorful, unique and fertile American region with a difficult past and uncertain future.

Jeffery Beam
Poet Jeffery Beam has published over 12 books and recordings and received numerous awards for his work. Employed as Assistant to the Biology Librarian in the Botany Library at UNC-Chapel Hill, Beam is also poetry editor of the print and online journal, Oyster Boy Review and a contributing editor to Arabesques Review. With his photographs, Beam's impulse is “to somehow excavate from the seen - the material world - what glows behind it, what seems un-discerned until looked upon with Blakean doors thrown open.”

Lissa Gotwals
Formerly a staff photographer for the Independent Weekly, Lissa Gotwals's Central Park South captures the imperfect beauty of the neighborhood around Foster Street in Durham. “This ongoing photo project is my personal way of preserving moments and landscapes throughout the stages of an ever-evolving downtown space—a snapshot of Durham’s humility and harmony.”

Will Grossman
The past meets the present with Will Grossman's photographs of Durham in the early 1970s. He documents a city in transition, beginning to grow rapidly beyond its tobacco roots and embarking on transformative urban renewal. His photographs of the corner hot dog stand, the barbershop, tobacco barns, country roads, streetscapes and portraits of the city's diverse community capture a unique moment in Durham's history.

Lowell Handler
Lowell Handler is perhaps best known for writing Twitch & Shout: A Touretter's Tale, a memoir of his experience as a young photojournalist coming of age with Tourette Syndrome. A former Black Star contract photojournalist, Handler's in-depth photographic projects include a portrait of late 1970s New Orleans and the contemporary socioeconomic decline of the small Midwestern town Madison, Missouri.

Murry Handler
A native of Bangor, Maine, Murry Handler settled in New York City to achieve a career as an award-winning illustrator and designer. The only non-photographer represented by Through This Lens, Handler's painting has evolved over the decades from tight realism to flowing, turbulent expressionistic pieces. Both original paintings and limited edition prints are available.

Rex Miller
Photographer and filmmaker Rex Miller became interested in Mississippi after photographing B.B. King and meeting folklorist Worth Long. With the multi-media project All the Blues Gone Miller returns to the roots of blues music in the Mississippi delta and builds an intimate portrait of a handful of characters whose lives are shaped by many of the same trials and tribulations blues musicians faced in the 1920s and 1930s.

Eleanor Mills
For Eleanor Mills, “gardening and photography are companion activities that complement each other.” Kneeling in the dirt affords a tight view of her surroundings. From the colorful chaos, Mills' photographs, “gently place a balanced order to the details.” Research Services Assistant with the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University's Perkins Library, Mills also photographs the decay of man-made objects. Her series Keep Durham Disreputable includes abstract images of rust and peeling paint whose highly saturated colors evoke wounds or sores.

Luke Powell
Luke Powell was born and raised in North Carolina. He holds a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master of the Arts of Religion degree from Yale University. His work captures the beauty and dignity of Afghanistan from the cities in the news to remote villages reachable only on horseback. He photographed the country extensively throughout the 1970s as a tourist and again from 2000 - 2003 in the employ of the United Nations to document minefields, mine victims, and demining efforts.

Jean-Christian Rostagni
A self-described photographe sur la ligne de front (front-line photographer), Rostagni's work is deeply rooted in a French breed of photojournalism comprised of both documentary and conceptual styles. Intellectually challenging and often political, his images include a wide range of subject matter. Known for his exceptional technical skill and attention to detail, Rostagni not only mixes his own darkroom chemistry, he also designs, constructs, and hand-finishes individual frames to complement each print.

Chip Thomas
A native of Raleigh, Chip Thomas has lived and worked as a physician on Navajo Nation since 1987. A non-Navajo on native lands, Thomas has employed photography to communicate without speaking. "When I'm successful, I get behind the facades of my subjects and eliminate the barrier that exists between us."

Hank Tusinski
Most of Hank Tusinski's photographic work focuses on the Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico and the American Southwest. A trip to Oaxaca, Mexico in 2006, intended as a Day of the Dead photography expedition, yielded over 1,500 images documenting the civil unrest in the city and the uprising of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO).

Ami Vitale
With a degree in International Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill, Ami Vitale began her career working as an editor for the Associated Press in New York and Washington, DC. Best known for her cultural documentation, Vitale is a humane and empathetic storyteller. Her award-winning, compassionate photographs capture the moments of beauty and strength of spirit of people living in desperate situations and savage climates.

Roberta Wallace
The black and white photographs comprising The Look series by Roberta Wallace are elegant studies of form and tone. For Wallace, a clinical social worker with Duke's Bryan Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and a self-taught artist, these images are, “about mystery, mood, observation and remembrance.” Taken on travels with her family, Wallace’s photographs contain aspects which, she admits, “often seem already imbedded in my memory, possibly as they possess some formal characteristics of previously seen works of art.”

Wojtek Wojdynski
A fine art photographer specializing in portraiture, Wojtek Wojdynski owns and runs the Chapel Hill based FOTOgraphix, a portrait studio and fine art printing lab. The black and white nude studies comprising his Allegory collection, “speak softly as they remark upon the purity of the nude body – a quiet passion not for sexuality but for the beauty of human geography.”

and more...