A Sense of Place:
Ara Oshagan
Ara Oshagan's work revolves around the themes of identity and community. Since 1995, Ara has been photographing survivors of the Armenian Genocide along with photographer Levon Parian and a team of oral historians, called The Genocide Project. Witness, an exhibit of works from this project, was shown with acclaim at the DMOA in 2000 and was covered by NPR’s Morning Edition by Nova Safo.
In 2001, working with the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture, Oshagan received a California Council for the Humanities Major Grant to photograph the Armenian experience in Los Angeles. Traces of Identity was exhibited at the Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Park in 2004 and then was on view at DMOA in 2005/6.
Raymond Meeks
Raymond Meeks was born in 1963 in central Ohio. Ray taught himself how to use a camera with the sole intent of making a few good pictures of his grandmother. A deep passion for photography and visual arts followed, as did editorial assignments with the New York Times, Esquire and Audubon as well as collaborations with noted writers such as Rick Bass and Gretel Erhlich. The confluence of words and pictures continues to excite his picture making. Of Summer Running (Nazraeli Press in 2004) is the first collection of photographs to be published as a monograph. Ray and his family make their home in the Bitterroot Valley of Western Montana. His work is in the permanent collections of Sir Elton John, Columbus Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Downey Museum of Art.
Jeff Marks
Jeff Marks’ work takes meaning from moments of life captured that explore time and place. Metro is a body of work photographed over several years in the 1980’s at the birth of the Downtown art scene that worked to capture the meaning of place in L.A. art world through the life of one gallery.
Jeff lives in San Diego.
Charles Villiers
Charles Villiers’ work explores the soul of relationships and life. For the last seven years, Villiers lived on Vancouver Island BC where the idea came for the work he calls The Arbutus Project named for his favorite tree. The Salish honor the Arbutus as a tree of knowledge and healing because it knows how to find the sun and ruggedly survives in beauty even in the harshest climates, living up to 500 years. In The Arbutus Project, Villiers explores survival, the search for personal place and identity. Charles lives on Vancouver Island.
Dean Larson
Dean Larson’s work explores the idealized state of glamour. Larson has used both the materials and process of romantic eras to create photographs that capture life in a pure state. In Ideal Estates, Larson prefers the ‘pureness’ of black and white photography where only various shades of grey make up an image leaving behind the distractions of color. His love of the Hollywood Glamour era with its highly idealized portrait photographs and movies is at the foundation of Ideal Estates. The series was born over a period of time spent walking in his Hollywood neighborhood, where a new appreciation of the area he called ‘home’ was found. Dean lives in Hollywood with his wife artist Laura Larson.