charbonneau / french

VERVE Gallery of Photography Presents
Opening Reception: Friday, November 4, 2011, 5-7pm
Exhibition is on view through Saturday, December 31, 2011
Conversations with the artists: Saturday, November 5, 2011, 2pm
Location: VERVE Gallery of Photography
CONTACT INFORMATION FOR JEFF CHARBONNEAU AND ELIZA FRENCH
Email: contact@sevensistersasleep.com
Phone: 310-397-7936
CONTACT INFORMATION FOR JENNIFER B. HUDSON
Email: oliveavonlea@yahoo.com
Phone: 617-697-4544
CONTACT INFORMATION FOR VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Jennifer Schlesinger, Director
219 E. Marcy Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501
Email: jennifer@vervegallery.com
Phone: 505-982-5009 Fax: 505-982-9111
VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY VERVE Gallery of Photography is pleased to present an exhibition with three artists, the
collaborative team of Jeff Charbonneau and Eliza French (known simply as Charbonneau /
French) and artist Jennifer B. Hudson. These artists work narratively, using stories and ideas that
play out visually in their staged imagery. Jennifer B. Hudson’s small prints will grace the walls of
the smaller and more intimate room in the gallery and Charbonneau/French’s large scale work
will be exhibited in the main gallery space.
The public reception for this exhibition takes place on Friday, November 4, 2011 from 5 to
7pm. There will be a conversation with the artists at VERVE Gallery on Saturday, November 5
beginning at 2pm.
The exhibition is on view through Saturday, December 31, 2011.
CHARBONNEAU / FRENCH
The collaborative team Jeff Charbonneau and Eliza French (Charbonneau / French) debut their
first exhibition at VERVE Gallery with 21 large-scale photographs from both their Massillon and
Playground series. Their work has been appropriately described as images with Victorian-era
aesthetics and a 19th century craftsmanship. They produce their work by combining traditional
black and white darkroom techniques with contemporary photographic processes.
The Massillon series takes its name from the Ohio town where Eliza French’s great-grandmother,
Zeta Eliza Woolley, lived at the turn of the 20th century. Massillon reads as an unraveling
narrative inspired by the artist’s memories, old family folklore, dreams and childhood
reminiscence. These recollections are transformed into works that have been described as “stills,
it would seem, [from] an Edgar Allan Poe film adaptation by Ingmar Bergman.” While the work is
distinctively inspired by French’s ancestry, the artists say the work, “…is a meditation on
memory, and how it functions through the two of us, and between us.”
The series Playground focuses on the study of primary shapes, and their literal and symbolic
relationships to human subjects and the natural world. Eliza French notes of the work:
In these highly designed pictures we have strayed away from the emotionally driven
narrative that characterized our previous series, Massillon, to create visual poetry through
experiments with proportion, distance, and repetition in space.
With the Playground series, Charbonneau and French have ventured into such realms of
influence as classic mythology, Buckminster Fuller’s utopian communities, mid-twentieth century
architectural sketches, Dava Sobel’s book, Planets, and their own childhood experiences with
weather balloons. Each photograph in Playground begins with the artists’ sculptural intervention
into a found landscape or surface through the decisive placement of people and objects,
including large monochromatic spheres and diminutive and fanciful female figures. The images
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VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY conclude with performances, postures and arrangements captured on film that are often infused
with elements of classical mythology and subtle references to the universe as created and
manipulated by gods and goddesses of polytheistic times.
All of the work by Charbonneau and French is rendered via meticulously executed installation,
staging and equally exacting post-production work. The artists utilize traditional darkroom
techniques and shoot their scenes with film in medium and large format cameras. Jeff
Charbonneau explains:
Our images are essentially staged performance/installation stills, as we are very interested
in capturing a real moment in time and adhering to the sentiments of traditional film based
photography. As such, we prefer manipulating our images in a wet darkroom
environment, rather than in the digital domain. In our Massillon series, where clouds are
upside-down, or superimposed over a figure, the manipulations were done strictly in the
darkroom using multiple negatives. In Playground we only retouched minor areas where
the large orbs were tethered to the ground with small weights.”
Charbonneau and French do, however, rely on digital technologies for the enlargement and
printing process of their images. In the interest of maintaining consistency throughout their
editions, large-scale exhibition prints are created using digital Chromogenic print technology
based on their original silver gelatin masters.
Jeff Charbonneau and Eliza French have been working together since 2004, when a mutual
interest in the photographic medium brought them together. Their performance-based images are
created through a partnership from conception to completion. Charbonneau/French’s work has
been exhibited nationally and internationally in shows and art fairs since 2006, as well as
featured in such international publications as Photograph Magazine, American Photo, and Photo
+.
Jeff Charbonneau is a masterful printer working in traditional black and white darkroom
technique. He attended the University of Wisconsin and UCLA for graduate studies where he
studied music, anthropology and photography. He has divided his time between the motion
picture and television industry and photography for twenty years. Eliza French studied
screenwriting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and earned a degree in Art History from UCLA in
2001. In 2008, she became a full-time artist in collaboration with Charbonneau after working for
several years in the entertainment and arts industries.
Both artists live and work in Los Angeles.
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VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY JENNIFER B. HUDSON
Jennifer B. Hudson’s exhibition consists of three bodies of work. All of Jennifer’s images find their
inspiration in spirituality, in religious symbolism, the anguish in life’s transitory nature, and
empathy in personal relationships. She is a dynamic and emotional illustrator who uses forgotten
or discarded mechanical devices in staging her scenes. Hudson’s images are both artistically
stylized and meticulously crafted into intimately small-scale prints.
Jennifer’s series Baptism is a personal exploration of a young woman's journey through life’s
altering experiences to a spiritual reawakening. We follow the empowered woman’s heartfelt
journey from guilt and transgression, temptation and despair, to prayer, commitment,
reconciliation, and grace. This work illustrates adversity, agony and triumph; the mysteries of
human religiosity. Jennifer’s Flora series, a work in progress, combines human forms to create
floral arrangements of the more common spiritual icons.
Medic is a snapshot of physically or spiritually ill humans and their relationships with themselves
and others in times of need----- the images are metaphors exploring introspection, empathy and
compassion. Jennifer Hudson explains:
The work began wholly on one sentence whispered by my husband while we endured a
deeply unsettling time together. He held my hand, lay close to me and said softly, "I just
wish I could take the pain from your body, and put it into mine." I have been fortunate to
know incredible love all my life, but at that moment I became suddenly and intensely
aware of the magnificent power that exists between people who care for one another.
When I was anxious and fighting to fall asleep each night, I began to invent miracle
machines; contraptions that heal, deliver hope, legacy, remedy, and redemption. Each
image from Medic is a thoughtful invention, strange and tender, revealing facets of the
delicate human heart…. In the making of this work, I sought to begin to understand some
of the most rare and beautiful relationships in the world, to expose their most frail,
vulnerable moments, times of great intensity, and most cherished inner workings.
In the ten isolated chamber scenes in the Medic body of work we are invited to witness
emotional experiences, exchanges, and confrontations brought on by life’s transitory nature. In
some chambers, we are invited to experience life-changing moments for persons with humbling
choices. In other chambers, we see exchanges of affection, tenderness, connection, mercy and
empathy. However, each chamber metaphorically explores the challenges to both individuals
and human relationships during serious illness and their fantasizing for a “miracle machine, a
contraption that heals”.
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VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY In spite of having been raised in a religious and conservative home in rural Texas, Jennifer
Hudson grew up imaginative, curious, introspective and experimental. She uses her formative
experiences to bring insight and awareness to her intensely personal artwork. Hudson is
currently working in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is an MFA Degree candidate at the
University of New Mexico, in the Studio Art Photography Program. In addition to private
portraiture commissions, she is an international speaker and lecturer sought out year after year by
many professional public and private photographic organizations. Jennifer’s work has been a part
of many exhibitions, and is represented by three major galleries across the country.
HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST
(Selection of low-resolution jpgs below)
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VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY CHARBONNEAU / FRENCH
CHARBONNEAU / FRENCH, Axis Memoria, (from the Massillon Series)
29.25 x 29.25", Chromogenic Print, Edition of 7
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VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY CHARBONNEAU / FRENCH, The Sepulture, (from the Massillon Series)
29.25 x 29.25", Chromogenic Print, Edition of 7
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VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY CHARBONNEAU / FRENCH, Traction, (from the Massillon Series)
29.25 x 29.25", Chromogenic Print, Edition of 7
9
VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY CHARBONNEAU / FRENCH, Europa, (from the Playground Series)
20 x 20", Chromogenic Print, Edition of 5
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VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY CHARBONNEAU / FRENCH, Dividing Suns, (from the Playground Series)
20 x 38.5", Chromogenic Print, Edition of 4
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VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY CHARBONNEAU / FRENCH, The Moon is a Hard Mistress, (from the Playground Series)
20 x 20", Chromogenic Print, Edition of 5
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VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY JENNIFER B. HUDSON, Surrender, (from the Baptism Series)
9.75 x 9.75", Archival pigment ink print, Edition of 10
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VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY JENNIFER B. HUDSON, Surrender, (from the Baptism Series)
9.75 x 9.75", Archival pigment ink print, Edition of 10
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VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY JENNIFER B. HUDSON, Messenger (from the Medic Series)
10 x 10” Archival pigment ink print, Edition of 10
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VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY JENNIFER B. HUDSON, Borrowed Time (from the Medic Series)
10 x 10", Archival pigment ink print, Edition of 10
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VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY JENNIFER B. HUDSON, Flora 1 (from the Flora Series)
10 x 10", Archival pigment ink print, Edition of 10
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VERVE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY JENNIFER B. HUDSON, Flora 4 (from the Flora Series)
10 x 10", Archival pigment ink print, Edition of 10
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