Joseph Bellows Gallery
Chip Hooper: New Zealan's South Pacific & Tasman Sea
(June 16 - August 31, 2007)
Photographers included:
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Joseph Bellows Gallery is pleased to present the gallery's second exhibition of photographs by Chip Hooper. The exhibition will feature photographs from Hooper's most recent series, New Zealand's South Pacific and Tasman Sea. The exhibition will be on view from June 16 to August 31, 2007. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, June 16 (3-8 pm). A catalogue will accompany the exhibition.
As in his earlier series, California's Pacific, Chip Hooper continues to photograph magnificent ocean landscapes, this time along New Zealand's shores.
Hooper's black and white photographs are rooted in the tradition of classic landscape photography and inspired by masters of the genre such as Ansel Adams. However, Hooper offers a fresh and contemporary view of the natural world. Sunrise, Tasman Sea and Toward Dunedin, South Pacific are elegantly minimal studies of sky and sea and atmosphere, while Cape Foulwind Beach, Tasman Sea and 3 Rocks, Tasman Sea present the monolithic rocks and cliffs emerging from New Zealand's rugged coast.
Chip Hooper's pristine photographs convey the quiet solitude and tranquility of the ocean and allow the viewer to behold the physical power and sublime beauty of the landscape. His meditative photographs invite deep contemplation and spiritual reflection on the natural world.
A recent review in The New Yorker stated, "Chip Hooper's photographs of New Zealand beaches and seascapes are classically beautiful and restrained in a style reminiscent of Richard Misrach or Joel Meyerowitz, but in rich, subtle, serene black-and-white. Although they're the furthest thing from avant-garde, the best of these images avoid traps that so much traditional landscape work falls into; no matter how handsome, they're never merely pretty pictures. Hooper nods to history, notably to Gustave Le Gray, but he also acknowledges Hiroshi Sugimoto and Robert Adams without ever losing his own quiet appealing way." (The New Yorker, May 14, 2007)
Chip Hooper was born in Miami in 1962 and was raised in Chicago. His work is in the permanent collections of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Monterey Museum of Art, Portland Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Tokyo Photographic Cultural Center. He currently lives and works in Carmel Valley, California.
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