I’m very honored to be included in this national exhibition curated by the esteemed Kim Conaty, Chief Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Archives For Exhibitions
Very excited to announce that selections from my 2013 series Infinities and Light Projections will be shown in Berlin at the ALFRED EHRHARDT STIFTUNG FOUNDATION | Auguststr. 75 | 10117 Berlin, GERMANY April 15th to July 9th, 2023
DOWNLOAD THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE:
I met Martha during her visit to Cranbrook Academy of Art Master of Photography Program under Carl Toth. She became a good friend and was responsible for giving me one of my first teaching positions at Temple University. She will be remembered as a pure spirit, for her incredible body of work and the legions of great photographers she influenced.
“My work is a direct experience of light and the fragility of life through the seasons,” Madigan once wrote. “Nature is a great teacher. Nature always reminds me of the fullness and vitality of life as well as the death and decay that dwell within every living thing.’’
Below is a review of the many remembrances written for her.
Martha Madigan (born August 17, 1950 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; died August 22, 2022 in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania) was a pioneering American photographic artist, educator, and professor emerita whose innovative work and teaching shaped generations of photographers and artists.
Madigan’s lifelong artistic journey began in her youth, when she built her first pinhole camera and developed an early fascination with light, nature, and image-making. She earned a B.S. in Art Education from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1972) and an M.F.A. in Studio Art and Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1978).
She became known as a true innovator in “camera-less” photography, especially large-format photograms and cyanotypes—works created by placing objects or subjects directly on light-sensitive paper and exposing them to sunlight, producing unique silhouettes and tonal effects. One of her large cyanotypes from the Falls Bridge series is held in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s permanent collection. Her work spans solar photograms, experimental processes, traditional photography, and conceptual bodies of work that explore nature, the human figure, time, and the sacred presence in life.
Madigan also gained early recognition for self-portraiture long before the term “selfie” entered popular vocabulary, notably using large Hasselblad and Mamiya cameras for her “Daily Portrait” project—a deeply personal documentation of daily family life.
In 1979 she joined Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia, where she spent more than four decades as a professor, program director, and mentor. Her teaching, known for its intellectual rigor balanced with personal warmth, earned deep respect from colleagues and students alike. She also taught and lectured internationally, including at Temple University Rome.
Madigan’s artworks have been exhibited widely and are represented in major museum collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Art Institute of Chicago, Milwaukee Art Museum, and many others. She received numerous honors, grants, and fellowships, including a Leeway Foundation Grant for Excellence in Photography (1996) and a solo exhibition at the Haggerty Art Museum (Milwaukee).
Her creative life was deeply informed by nature, spirituality, and contemplative practices, and she identified as a feminist and passionate advocate for her students and community.
Galerie Karsten Greve is delighted to present This Shimmering World, a solo exhibition featuring new work by American photographer Thomas Brummett. Works from the RIVER and HALOS series, created in 2020 and 2021 and part of Rethinking the Natural, Brummett’s “project of a lifetime,” will be on show. In his photography series, Thomas Brummett not only explores natural phenomena but also manifestations of the cosmos in many different ways. All his images are contemplative and profound in character, created through quiet attention and intensive observation of his current surroundings. They are based on a rendering of a vital microcosm reflected in the macrocosm of his pictures: “One constant in my work would be looking at things very closely or over long periods of time. “These images are my meditations and are a constant through my life’s work,” says Thomas Brummett.
The influence of traditions from the Far East combined with modern natural science is just as clearly evident in his works as is the spiritual and artistic examination of nature and one’s own existence. He uses the camera as a tool, as a research instrument and mediator between the inner and outer worlds, microcosm and macrocosm, close-up and long-distance view, human being and cosmos. The River series addresses the endless movement of a river in which the world at the edge of the bank is reflected in different ways. Consisting almost exclusively of abstract organic patterns, the images appear as if they were abstract drawings when looked at from a distance. Up close, you can see the reflections in the river, which, to Thomas Brummett, seem like “portals into a reversed other world “.
His Halos series is dedicated to the light effects of atmospheric optics, known as halo phenomena. Halos are created by refraction and reflection of light, similar to rainbows. Thomas Brummett’s Halos pictures show this interaction of light and nature. They are light images exuding an almost mystical atmosphere and poetic beauty. The artist sublimates his many years of exploring the perception and reproduction of the phenomenon of light in its various forms. For him, light not only means physical light but also spiritual light, whose “shimmering,” almost magical quality, fed from an infinite source, invites the viewer to contemplatively approach his idea of “true Seeing.”
Get the catalog here: https://galerie-karsten-greve.com/en/publications/detail/417-this-shimmering-world
