Thursday October 9 through Friday November 7, 2008
Opening reception: Thursday, October 9th 2008, 6pm

Toyland showcases the photography of six artists working with simple whimsical toy cameras. The common bond of the artists in this show is the decision to work with cameras that are little more than toys. From these most modest of tools they have put forth a fascinating and varied collection of images. Featuring work by Chris Macan, Mira Gohel, Mark Sink, Rita Bernstein, Andy Benson and Diana Bloomfield. Curated by NEXUS member Chris Macan

WABI SABI
Beauty lies with imperfection. The Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi perfectly embodies what is so wonderful about toy camera photography. You don’t look at an image created by a Holga, Lomo or a Diana and think, “I could never make an image that perfect”. The light leaks, the vignetting, the blurred edges, funky colors and heightened grain all lend to these images being easy to appreciate. Unlike an Ansel Adams landscape, these images don’t rely on razor focus or infinite depth of field. In fact they are a rebellion against just that. They find their beauty in the subject, the spontaneity, the point of view and the general air of wackiness the lens takes in.
Each artist in this group uses these toy cameras in a different way. Whether they’re creating living sculptures captured in the least of self-conscious ways, or dancing through a city park with a model who’s loving the ease that these little plastic cameras create, they are all using them because of their genuine and unique qualities.
You could take the same picture with 25 different Holgas and not one would be the same, no matter how controlled the situation. Each of these cameras has its own personality, its own view of the world.
We hope you appreciate these images for their innocence and uniqueness. Perhaps you’ll even go home, order a camera from Lomography and get shooting.

Chris Macan

Chris Macan is a process driven photographer, artist and curator living, working
and showing in Philadelphia PA. Chris is member of Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art and has curated shows in the Philadelphia area as a gallery director and as half of the popular alternative-curating duo Dissentia Curatorial Services. Chris Macan’s shows are best described as concept driven art happenings. These shows have included “Steal this Show” (a show of artwork for theft), “The ID Project” (a show of ID camera Portraits including an onsite photo booth), “Outhouse/Inhouse” (a show of outhouses built to offer private viewing of art) and of course the Upcoming show “Toyland. His work is often process drive in that a body of work usually evolves out of an interest in a technical process or piece of photographic equipment.

Mira Gohel
I have been shooting black and white photographs using a plastic camera for the last 10 years. My subject matter has largely been people and other things near and dear to me; unguarded and in their element. Photoshoot is a small series that explores how people want their likenesses to be recorded and, one would surmise, remembered, under a variety of recreational circumstances. The questions might be: Do they really see themselves like that, or are they having a laugh? When they view the digital image seconds later, will they like what they see, or will it be deleted? While it questions the subjects' motivations and perceptions, this series also does not let the voyeurism inherent in the arts off the hook.

Mark Sink
Mark Sink, photographer, curator and teacher, has been and making a living from fine art photography since 1978. His personal work is in numerous museum collections as well as gallery solo and group shows in the US, South America and Europe. He is currently represented by G. Ray Hawkins in CA. Robin Rice in NY, Rule Gallery in Denver, along with galleries in Seattle and Santa Fe. As a photographer of fine art he worked with and documented noted artists lives and their work such as Andy Warhol and Jean Michel Basquiat and Rene Ricard.

Rita Bernstein

I began to photograph in earnest in 1990, a point in my life when I had recently left my career as a civil rights lawyer and had two young children to whom I was tethered. Initially I intended to make the kinds of pictures any doting mother would, but, in fact, the transition from office to home was difficult for me, and that truth quickly showed up in my photographs. I explored the sorrows as well as the sweetness of family life and, more generally, the ambivalence that shadows intimate relationships. In watching my own children, I was reminded of the conflicts and restlessness that had pervaded my own girlhood. My eye was more that of the child than of the parent, and the domestic landscape pictures strike me now as deeply autobiographical.

Andy Benson

Obsessed with visual stimulation, Andy shoots to create a story. Whether it’s a single meditative image or multiple exposures to capture the action unfolding, his images raise questions of actions and origins. He adds a dynamic to a scene that may be shrouded by experience. But he dutifully unmasks it and lays it out to experience anew. Currently working in advertising, Andy got his BFA in photography from Savannah College of Art & Design.
Specializing in historic techniques, he quickly turned to low-fi cameras to capture life as it happens in an unintimidating way. He’s been in many group shows as well as having a number of solo shows.

Diana Bloomfield

Diana specializes in pinhole and in 19th Century printing techniques, including platinum/palladium, cyanotype, and hand-tinting. She teaches at various locations in the North Carolina Research Triangle area, including the North Carolina State University Crafts Center in Raleigh, and through Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies in Durham. Diana Hooper Bloomfield, a photographer for the last twenty-five years, lives and works in Raleigh, North Carolina. Diana has received numerous awards for her images, including a 1985-86 New Jersey State Visual Art Fellowship and several Regional Artist Project Grants from the United Arts of Raleigh, most recently for 2003-04. Diana received Golden Light Awards from the Maine Photographic Workshops for her images, in both 2003 and 2004. Her photographs have also appeared in several publications, including in the third edition of Eric Renner’s Pinhole Photography: Rediscovering a Historic Technique; in the Pinhole Journal; the Post-Factory Journal; and in the January 2005 issue of Chinese Photography.