The Lumiere is proud to present exhibition of an award winning fine art photographer Wendy Paton and her series Visages de Nuit – personal and intimate glimpses of our human, ineffable presence in mesmerizing graphic compositions of black and white that mesmerizes us.
Wendy Paton was in the throws of a successful ground breaking career training and driving Standardred race horses in New York, when in 1981 her interest in photography emerged. Wendy studied photography at the International Center of Photography in New York City, learned the intricacies of night photography from Michael Kenna, and darkroom printing techniques from her mentor and collaborator, master printer Chuck Kelton.
Wendy Paton allows herself to disappear in order to let her subjects emerge from the night: “For me, photography means concentrating on something and peeling back the individual layers until you have reached its true essence. This can be the moment when I press the shutter button, how I develop the film, or how I ultimately print the photograph—or a combination of all three.”
Her nocturnal portraits are both intimate and familiar, compelling and mysterious. Paton, who works solely with manual film cameras, shot this body of work over a six-year span beginning in 2006. Intrigued by the mysterious and ever-changing nature of human personalities and their individual choices of expression, she chooses to photograph at night, when she believes people feel the freedom to be as they wish; take on a personality that they imagine, or simply be themselves, striping down any false face. It is this freedom of expression at night that Paton searches for in her subjects. Her fascination with the darkness allows her to document with truth and clarity what she sees in the people of the night. As with Cartier-Bresson, her images are taken in that “decisive moment”, a moment that only the photographer, at that specific instant in time, instinctually knows “this is the time, take the photograph”.
Paton’s series of black and white candid night images, Visages de Nuit, was first exhibited in 2009 in the exhibition, Clues To Identity, at the International Center of Photography, Rita K. Hillman Gallery in New York City. Her first solo exhibition in New York followed in March of 2010 at Sous Les Etoiles Gallery. The artist’s European debut of her Visages de Nuit images opened in January 2011 in American Portraits at In Focus Galerie, Koln, Germany. She in professionally represented by Sous Les Etoiles Gallery, NYC, In Focus Galerie, Koln, Germany and The Lumiere Photogallery, Moscow, Russia.
Paton’s work has been exhibited in gallery and museum venues. Internationally, and is in private and public collections in the US and Europe. The publication of her fist monograph, Visages de Nuit, (Kehrer Verlag), will launch with her debut exhibition in Russia, Visages de Nuit, at The Lumiere in Moscow September 2012.