ou are cordially invited to the “Happy Docent Hour” mixer October 1, 2009 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm at Avenue 50 studio. Join Avenue 50 and the artist for the closing of “East of the River”, Polaroid photographic prints by John Tapia Urquiza. 

"John sans polaroids are a journey filled with the stillness and the suspense of a Jim Jarmusch film." —Santa Sugiyama, director, winner Palm D’or for advertising

Photography has played a major role in the development of modern society. It has so permeated our culture and consciousness that photography is in danger of being trivialized and lost. Its ability and the ease in which it can reproduce realism leaves, the untrained viewer unable to discern between their own vision and the photographer’s voice. In its early days photography was a science and tool for documentation. In 1902 all that changed when Alfred Stieglitz known historically as a photographer, gallerist and husband to Georgia O’keefe held the first photography exhibition for the Secessionists. This growing movement of European and American photographers decidedly took photography from a documentary way of perceiving the world to a more expressive and emotional medium. 

In that tradition Urquiza presents his Polaroids. The images of landscapes and vignettes of a past life are reduced to three by three-inch windows into time. The southwest prints evoke an era long past while the objects and scenes of East Los Angeles recall childhood memories. The more recent images of the river itself still haunt our present day with questions of how time has changed little. 

Please RSVP to Kathy Gallegos at Avenue 50 Studios. 
ave50studio@sbcglobal.net

“East of the River” 
September 12—October 4, 2009