HELD SATURDAY 10/25/08

“Move Along” features the work of four photographers, Tracy Clayton, Pat Padua, Katy Ray and Matt Smith, who capture scenes that pass briefly before our eyes, perhaps preferring that we look away but only succeeding in making us stare longer. Clayton is a street photographer with an eye for subtle movement and brief moments that end before we fully noticed they happened. Padua’s sense of humor gives us images that aren’t momentary so much as they are oddly and amusingly uncomfortable. Ray’s time in New Orleans puts a nostalgic filter on her scenes, and the feeling we’ll soon miss the memory it gives us. By contrast, Smith’s highly constructed work explores the connections between the emotional loss experienced by the subjects in the text and the ways in which these memories can develop direct associations to our physical surroundings. Each of their images focuses on the scenes that are fleeting, whether we want them to be or not, and asks what happens when you weigh it a little longer than you should.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHERS

Tracy Clayton never leaves home without his camera. He can often be found roaming the streets of D.C., Philly, NYC and Miami letting the shutter fly. A self-taught street photographer, Tracy learns with every shot; he enjoys taking everyday moments and turning them into art. Tracy’s photos have been featured in Six Degrees Magazine and the blogs DCist, Miamist, and Phillyist. Tracy’s work has been exhibited in the DCist Exposed Photography Show two years running. Tracy’s photographic inspirations are Gordon Parks and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Matt Smith’s photographs begin as internal concepts that are then externalized into staged scenes. The subject matter tends to be highly personal but the themes are ultimately universal – generally isolation and its derivatives. Matt wants to make images of people without actually taking photos of people; it’s the imprints of what people do that interests him. Matt’s current project was influenced by Sophie Calle’s series “Take care of yourself,” and his work will be featured in the November issue of ArtVoices magazine. He was born and raised in Lima, Peru, and is a geographer by trade.
Katy Ray wanted to be an astronaut once. Maybe twice. After realizing that there’s so much to learn within even an arm’s length, Katy started her career as an observationist. She picked up her old camera while completing her degree in nonfiction writing, and started shooting film — black and white at first, and then color slides. Although she’s delved into the digital world, Katy always feels at home with a manual film camera.
Pat Padua bridges high-brow and low-brow to form a distinctive American pan-browism. He hears the voices cry out from the Western Canon to Justin Timberlake, and, with an arsenal of optical tools ranging from disposable message cameras to the sharpest Hassy glass, he coaxes out the voices with a visual acuity akin to shamanism. “A talented, if quirky, photographer,” in the words of the Washington Post, Padua has exhibited his work in San Francisco and Baltimore, as well as in his home town of Washington DC.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Heather Goss founded Ten Miles Square to promote emerging photographers in the D.C. region through community events that bring photographer and viewer together in unique venues. She got her foothold in the local art scene as the Managing and Arts Editor of DCist.com, where she has covered visual art in D.C. since February 2006. She created and now organizes and juries the annual DCist Exposed Photography Show, which has exhibited at the Warehouse art gallery (2007) and Civilian Art Projects (2008), and will appear at the Gallery at Flashpoint (2009).

Heather was recently selected to be on the jury panel for the first annual FotoWeekDC contest, alongside such distinguished persons as Pulitzer Prize winner Deanne Fitzmaurice, 2005 Fine Art Photographer of the Year Joyce Tenneson, and Tipper Gore. In addition to DCist, her writings have appeared in the Washingtonian Magazine and Ohio Wesleyan University magazine. She’s been a guest on the Kojo Nnamdi Show to discuss visual art in the metro area, and spends her days working as an attorney at a large law firm in downtown D.C.

For more information, go to: http://www.tenmilessquare.com

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