Atlanta Celebrates Photography: 15 and growing

Atlanta Celebrates Photography launched humbly enough in 1998, with 100 people venturing out for a lecture and a dinner. Fifteen years on, my, how this festival of exhibits, lectures, commissions, collaborations, portfolio reviews and more has grown.

Now ACP, which mainly unfolds in October but presents offerings through the end of the year, lists 109 events in its 2013 guide.

Atlanta’s photography scene has meanwhile flourished. The city now boasts at least six full-time showplaces of the art form — the Atlanta Photography Group Gallery, the Arnkia Dawkins Gallery, the Hagedorn Foundation Gallery, Jackson Fine Art, Lumiere and the Jennifer Schwartz Gallery — and fine art galleries and museums show it frequently as well. Photography represents the largest and fastest-growing permanent collection at the High Museum, with more than 5,400 works.

ACP Executive Director Amy Miller said the annual festival seeks to both reflect the growth and help drive it.

As for what makes Atlantans gravitate in great numbers to photography, Miller said it’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg question.

“Does something about Atlanta make it suited to be a photography town, or is it a photography town because we have all of these things happening here?” she asked. “Who knows, but it is an exciting time to be involved with this, the fastest-growing art form of our time.”

Here is a sampling of ACP programs that suggests the depth of this year’s fest:

A tapestry of humanity

There is a world of expression just in the eyes of New York-based photojournalist Alison Wright's subjects. A photographer for National Geographic and other publications as well as humanitarian organizations, Wright finds connectedness in remote parts of the globe. That is amply illustrated in her new book, "Face to Face: Portraits of the Human Spirit," and an exhibit of the same title through Oct. 31 at Pace Academy. It opens with a lecture at 7 p.m. Oct. 3, with a book signing at 8 p.m. 966 W. Paces Ferry Road N.W., Atlanta. 404-384-5474, www.paceacademy.org.

Charging into a more expressive future

As technology thrusts forward, so do the expressive possibilities of photography. "Manipulated," at SCAD Atlanta's Gallery See through Dec. 27, features 10 artists who employ experimental and alternative studio and darkroom processes. The 10, important names nationally and internationally, include Atlantans Radcliffe Bailey and Elizabeth Turk as well as Christopher Bucklow, Chuck Close, Dan Estabrook and Abelardo Morell. Opening reception 6-8 p.m. Oct. 3 (with artist talk starting at 6). 1600 Peachtree St., Atlanta. 404-253-6080, www.scad.edu/locations/atlanta/learn.

Billboards that play with perception, place

The title of Gregor Turk's ACP-commissioned temporary public art installation is "Apparitions," so expect things to be unsettled. Located on the Atlanta Beltline near Piedmont Park, the project is a series of billboards whose imagery, commenting on place, will evolve through Oct. 26. The billboards now display photos of, well, blank billboards (an obsession of the Atlanta artist, with their patinas on weathered ads) that Turk took during 20 years of U.S. travels. These will "vanish" at some point and reveal the Atlanta landscape that had been obscured. Finally, a pair of gazing eyes — those of William Tecumseh Sherman — will appear, providing a reminder, Turk said, of "the history of Atlanta as integral to our sense of place." He will speak at 1:30 p.m. Oct. 26. 10th Street and Monroe Drive (near Park Tavern). 404-815-1178, www.acpinfo.org.

Thoroughly modern ‘Girl With a Pearl’

Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring” has left the building after its successful run at the High Museum. But Oct. 4, we will have “Women with a Pearl Earring,” a contemporary take on the Dutch masterpiece in which Irish-born, Paris-based photographer Kevin Hayden invites women of many ages and ethnicities to model the famous head wrap and oversized jewelery. Opening reception, 5-8 p.m. Oct. 4 (through Oct. 27) at La Galerie, 591 Park Drive N.E., Atlanta. 404-617-7389.

Black beauty at Spelman

"Posing Beauty in African American Culture," on view at Spelman College Museum though Dec. 7, features more than 75 photographs (as well as film, video, fashion, advertising and more) that explore the ways contemporary notions of beauty have been informed by photographers and artists from 1890 to the present. This nationally touring exhibit is curated by Deborah Willis, who speaks at 7 p.m. Oct. 17. 350 Spelman Lane, Atlanta. 404-270-5607, www.spelmanmuseum.org.

Pivot in to see Rollergirls

The hard-jamming Atlanta Rollergirls have countless admirers. You can appreciate them in photos, video and in person at a celebration at the Crazy Cuban sandwich shop in Midtown. Photos by Kevin Borke, Basil Gravanis, Tim Moxley, Aldo Ramirez and Ed Selby are the centerpiece of the party, noon-7 p.m. Oct. 12. 290 14th St. N.W., Atlanta. 404-607-7348, www.crazycuban.com.

Intimate look at ‘Movers and Shakers’

The earliest photos in "Lucinda Bunnen: Georgia Portraits," opening Oct. 18 at the Atlanta Preservation Center headquarters, date to when Jimmy Carter was storming the White House and the sophistication of growing Atlanta was unknown to many on the national scene. Bunnen, who moved comfortably in the circles her "Movers and Shakers" series portrays, focused on those who were shaping the state's political, cultural and business landscapes. After several decades, she has relaunched the series, old and new included in this show of nearly 30 portraits, which will run through Dec. 13 in the historic L.P. Grant Mansion in Grant Park, 327 St Paul Ave. S.E., Atlanta. 404-668-3353, Ext. 11, www.atlantapreservationcenter.com.

Bunnen is also at the center of the "The Bunnen Collection" at the High Museum. The show pays tribute to her eye as a collector-patron and art photographer, mixing her own work in with narrative-driven pieces by Ansel Adams, William Eggleston, Nan Goldin, Clarence John Laughlin, Sally Mann and other of the Atlantan's contemporaries. Through Feb. 2. 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-4200, www.high.org.

Photos of ‘A Painterly Nature’

Betty Edge and Kathryn Kolb, well-established Atlanta photographers who approach nature as their subject from different directions, are paired in an exhibit with landscape painter Stephen Pentak at Thomas Deans Fine Art opening Oct 18. Edge takes a nontraditional approach (such as printing with billboard ink on an aluminum composite) to evoke the transience and renewal of the natural world. Kolb focuses on nature's geometry, typically employing traditional techniques in her printing. Through Nov. 9. 690 Miami Circle N.E., Suite 905, Atlanta. 404-814-1811, www.thomasdeansfineart.com.

Giving faces to the homeless

Jan Banning's studio portraits of the homeless were turned into public art during last year's ACP, projected at a corner of downtown's Woodruff Park. This year, the Dutch photographer's work comes inside with a showing of the exhibit "Down and Out in the South" at the Hagedorn Foundation Gallery, from Oct. 26 to Jan. 4. Banning's works strive for the humanism of 17th-century Dutch painted portraits, an ironic note given that those tended to depict society's wealthiest and well-fed. Banning, who focuses on the telling details of his subjects' faces, will speak at 4 p.m. Oct. 26, with an opening reception 6-8:30 p.m. 425 Peachtree Hills Ave., No. 25, Atlanta. 404-492-7718, www.hfgallery.org.

Inspired by the weight of love

"The Heart and the Heavy," the series by Heather Evans Smith to be exhibited by the Jennifer Schwartz Gallery starting Nov. 1, was seeded with the birth of a daughter by the Chapel Hill, N.C., photographer. "Though there has been no greater joy for me, the responsibility of another life has proven to be at times a heavy load," Smith wrote in her artist statement. "Thinking about this in a literal sense, I imagined a heavy home on my shoulders, yet held tightly with love — a burden and a joy, a challenge and a reprieve." The conceptual images that resulted include a woman "Unraveling" from heavy rope coiled around her body and another adrift amid a "Domicile" of denuded, sculptural branches. The show will open with a 6-9 p.m. reception Nov. 1 at Deadringer Prints and Projects (Studio LR-12 at Goat Farm Arts Center, 1200 Foster St., Atlanta) and then move (through Dec. 20) to Schwartz's space at 675 Drewry St., No. 6, Atlanta. 404-885-1080, www.jenniferschwartzgallery.com.