Gil Mares - Harbor Abstracts
July 2 - 26, 2008 - Kidder Smith Gallery
Gil Mares in his own words, describing his July exhibit of Ilfochrome photograph mounted on aluminum of ships and their battle scars.
For the past two decades I have photographed details of Spanish colonial and adobe structures throughout the American Southwest and Latin America. I tend to concentrate on the simple yet elegant details that make each of these buildings unique. Over the years my style has evolved into a "distilling process" that concentrates on what is in plain view and attempts to pull out the essence of the subject. I recently began to use this process to photograph cargo freighters in the Los Angeles Harbor. While searching for images in the harbor, I was drawn to the worn hulls of the ships that dock there. These ships seem as great whales with battle scars which record their life-long struggle to survive. The ships at dock can be seen every day. However, the visual secrets of the ships are generally not known because of the distance between the ships and the observer. I have concentrated on eliminating this distance to reveal their beauty. The brightly painted hulls exhibit interesting patterns and textures which are reflected in the water. The hulls may appear delicate, tenuous, even transparent. However, the scrapes, gouges, rubber marks and rusting wounds, sometimes from the ships' own anchors, sometimes from the ubiquitous tires found on the sides of docks and tugboats, belie this frailty. At times a series of numbers or cryptic diagrams may appear on the massive hulls. These messages communicate only to those who assist in ferrying the ships in and out of the world's ports. - Gil Mares
I have never written about a showing at the Kidder Smith Gallery, but the colors of the work and the stories the photographs give off of the ships are so strong, that this gallery is a must see. The show started on the 2nd and runs only to the 26th of July.
Gil Mares in his own words, describing his July exhibit of Ilfochrome photograph mounted on aluminum of ships and their battle scars.
For the past two decades I have photographed details of Spanish colonial and adobe structures throughout the American Southwest and Latin America. I tend to concentrate on the simple yet elegant details that make each of these buildings unique. Over the years my style has evolved into a "distilling process" that concentrates on what is in plain view and attempts to pull out the essence of the subject. I recently began to use this process to photograph cargo freighters in the Los Angeles Harbor. While searching for images in the harbor, I was drawn to the worn hulls of the ships that dock there. These ships seem as great whales with battle scars which record their life-long struggle to survive. The ships at dock can be seen every day. However, the visual secrets of the ships are generally not known because of the distance between the ships and the observer. I have concentrated on eliminating this distance to reveal their beauty. The brightly painted hulls exhibit interesting patterns and textures which are reflected in the water. The hulls may appear delicate, tenuous, even transparent. However, the scrapes, gouges, rubber marks and rusting wounds, sometimes from the ships' own anchors, sometimes from the ubiquitous tires found on the sides of docks and tugboats, belie this frailty. At times a series of numbers or cryptic diagrams may appear on the massive hulls. These messages communicate only to those who assist in ferrying the ships in and out of the world's ports. - Gil Mares
I have never written about a showing at the Kidder Smith Gallery, but the colors of the work and the stories the photographs give off of the ships are so strong, that this gallery is a must see. The show started on the 2nd and runs only to the 26th of July.
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