Kent Krugh Speciation: Still a Camera
May 3 — June 27, 2018
Opening Reception: May 4, 6-8pm

PRESS RELEASE

Panopticon Gallery invites you to take a closer look at photography’s most important tool—the camera—in Kent Krugh’s solo exhibition. From the Graflex large format bellows camera to the Polaroid to the digital SLR, Speciation: Still A Camera presents a brief history of photography as told through the evolution of the camera.

“This project is an homage to the cameras I have owned, used, or handled. The tools of the trade, having faithfully imaged for decades, have themselves been imaged.” Says Krugh. Using x-ray technology, Krugh brings us inside the devices that have recorded our memories and histories. Although scientific in appearance, the images stir feelings of nostalgia for our first encounters with photography. Krugh’s images are as complex and ingenious as the objects they depict. The hidden gears and cogs are revealed for the first time, though they could be heard with each press of the shutter.

Today’s sophisticated digital cameras look and operate far differently than the first cameras of the nineteenth century. However, while the design and format of a camera has changed dramatically over the years, their function has not. The camera is still a camera: a tool to create images by recording photons of light. It is a box with a lens directed towards the subject to encode its likeness on a storage medium, be it film or digital sensor. This contraption, with complex machinery hidden inside, has been manufactured in many wonderful and clever designs by camera-makers year after year.

Kent Krugh holds a B.A. in Physics and an M.S. in Radiological Physics. His work has been exhibited across the country as well as internationally and is in the collections of the Luz Austral Foundation in Buenos Aires, Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Portland Art Museum, among others.

Speciation: Still A Camera is on view from May 3 to June 27, 2018, with a reception on Friday, May 4, from 6-8pm. The gallery is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Gallery staff is available Monday – Saturday, 10am to 6pm. For additional information, please visit our website panopticongallery.com, or contact Gallery Director Kat Kiernan at info@panopticongallery.com or 617.396.7803.

PRESS FOR SPECIATION: STILL A CAMERA