US photographer presents The Color of Calm
By Alan Green
Located in the Haebangchon neighborhood of Seoul, Laughing Tree Gallery is presenting the “The Color of Calm,” featuring works by American photographer Anya Dennis.
The solo exhibition explores the relationship between color, beauty and emotions. All images are connected through a common thread of green which symbolizes renewal, life, growth, nature and harmony. This body of work embraces the balance and opulence lent by its companion of color. Be awakened and be renewed as you witness the “The Color of Calm.”
Photographer, educator and global citizen, Dennis, a native of Philadelphia, photographed her first subject at age eighteen. While attending Clark Atlanta University she traveled to Ghana, West Africa in 1997. This experience afforded her the opportunity to record the marvelous images that colored Africa’s complex cultural and geographical terrain. It was this journey that gave birth to her passion for photography. Determined to explore the relationship between culture and identity, her travels across the continent from West to East Africa provided her the blank canvas she needed to explore and prompted her commitment to photography as a means of capturing the soul.
In 2000, while conducting independent research in Ethiopia, Egypt, Israel and Brazil Dennis visually explored religion and its impact on societal norms. Her zest for teaching and the profound inspiration she draws from photography led her back to Africa in 2003 to teach English in the small village of Abbiyi Addi, expanding her photographic body of work; a work that includes portraits from Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar. Her travels to South America and Southeast Asia between 2005 and 2010 were later added to the montage of her photographic stroke.
Today, Dennis continues to shoot real life subject matter around the world. Her published work can be found in Free Magazine and Souls: Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society.
“In the troubled world in which we live, there is a need for beauty and images that are soothing to the mind and spirit. My highest aspiration is to make visible the invisible by capturing the soul of a subject. Through photography, I experience life, the spiritual as well as the mundane. I strive to make images that open the heart of the viewer, that share a very personal sense of place, to which all who see are welcome. Immersed in this place, my images savor the deeply emotional and spiritual responses to culture and identity. What I see, hear and feel somehow come together to create the “essence of being" seen through the eye of a photographer. I’m often asked the perplexed question of, why did you take this picture or what inspired you to take this photograph? My respond to these questions is that I've chosen my images, as I have chosen my parents, freely, whole-heartedly, and without a moment’s regret. Which is another way of saying; I don't choose my images at all... my images chose me,” said the New York based photographer.
The exhibition is open through Feb. 5, from 4:00-9:00pm and viewings by appointment from Feb. 6 to 12. For more information visit Gallery.LaughingTree.com