Jim Farber: I/Eye, Photographs/Photo-drawings/Photo-collages, 1969-2008

Gallery Two and South Bay Focus

Gallery Closed: May 17 (Armed Forces Day) and May 24 (Memorial weekend)

The Torrance Art Museum presents a survey of photographic images by Jim Farber. In these works, created over a period extending from 1969 to 2008, Farber makes use of a range of photographic practices, from street photography to photo-drawings and photo-collages. 

About the Artist:

Like many young photographers of his generation, Jim Farber was inspired to take up the practice by Michelangelo Antonioni's seminal film, Blowup (1966). The Los Angeles native began to work with black and white photography while attending the San Francisco Art Institute between 1969 and 1972. At the time, SFAI was emerging at the forefront of experimental photography, encouraging students to expand their vocabulary of artmaking by hybridizing many practices and prioritizing self-expression over technique.

During this same period, Farber served as staff photographer for San Francisco public television station, KQED, where he specialized in performance photography. In the days before portable video equipment was available, many stories were illustrated with still photographs. Farber found himself photographing a wide range of subjects, from art icon Georgia O'Keeffe to female impersonator Charles Pierce, from stars of the San Francisco Opera to a country western music concert inside the walls of Soledad Prison. While at KQED, Farber also served as the associate producer of the nationally televised series, "Critic at Large" and as co-producer of the nationally televised music special "An Hour with Pink Floyd." 

After returning to Los Angeles in 1972, Farber began to create a series of highly detailed photo-collages. In these works, which arose spontaneously from his subconscious, he manipulated appropriated images and incorporated them into his own. By starting with a straight photograph of scenery and then adding fantastical elements to it, Farber ended up with what he has called a "constructed reality." 

 Concurrently, Farber engaged in landscape and travel photography. He made several trips abroad, working as a freelance photographer in Scotland and Venice, Italy. He would often spend free days wandering the streets with his camera or heading as far a field as Spain and Tunisia.

 In 1982 Farber began a second career as an arts journalist and critic, writing for the Jewish Journal, Daily Variety, the Long Beach Press Telegram, and the Copley News Service/Syndicate.  He is currently an arts staff writer for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group (LANG) and his work appears on the website LA.COM.

 For more information about Jim Farber, see this recent profile by Daily Breeze columnist John Bogert: http://www.dailybreeze.com/bogert/ci_8846283