France: Chaleur

Visually falling in love with people and places

 November 18 2010 - January 14, 2011 

ARTIST TALK: January 11, 2011 at 7 PM - Digital Silver Imaging -  Belmont, MA

“Chaleur”

Jonathan Stark's photography is an exploration of emotion, which he describes as "falling visually in love with people and places."
Stark has visited Morocco, Guadeloupe, Canada, Puerto Rico, and much of Europe.
A series of his photographs, France:Chaleur, is featured at Digital Silver Imaging in Belmont, MA, November 18 though January 14. An opening reception is November 19, 6-8 p.m
In France, the city streets of Paris and the Provencal countryside became his inspiration. "I enter an interactive relationship based upon my own feelings in response to individuals and the intangible experience of place," he says. "All my recent work has been created by my desire to engage people in a moment of emotional intimacy. For the time I am shooting, my subject and I are partners in the process of expressing visually the passions that reside within."

Stark has had solo shows at the French Library and Cultural Center in Boston. He won a bronze award from the American Society of Media Photographers in 2009.

Hits Back

Exploring the moments when we are most empowered

November 4 - November 28, 2010 - The Hallway Gallery - Jamaica Plain, MA

"Hits Back"  explores two themes that continue to resonate with me as I continue my work grounded in an interest in expressing visually our deepest emotions. These two themes are:

1. The moments in life when we reveal ourselves to others.
2. The moments when we are empowered and take our lives back.

Most importantly these moments are in their fullest one and the same.

These two themes first merged for me when I was asked to exhibit in a benefit for an organization fighting sexual and human trafficking. I thought it strange that they wanted to show my work which does show women
naked, (or at least covered in clay). The show's organizer said that: "The women that work with you are empowered to do so, they do so by choice, which is the opposite of the situation of the women who are trafficked".

A woman who was working with me at the time said that a phrase that she carries with her always is:

"I am more than anything that has happened to me".

The images of her became the central theme of that show, "Stop Traffic" and are continued and expanded upon in "Hits Back".

Jonathan Stark Fall 2010