from the KEY WEST ART & HISTORICAL SOCIETY 281 FRONT STREET, KEY WEST, FL 33040 295-6616 Fax: 295-6649
Attention: News editors, news directors, features editors and programming directors. Please use the following item as a news story, public service announcement or community event. Pix available. For immediate release Oct. 4, 2004.
To some observers the paradisiacal photographs of Dr. Lynne Bentley-Kemp are characterized by an ethereal resonance and dreamlike sense of de-ja vu. "They are wonderful scenes you seem to remember, but better than you remember," explained Norman Aberle, curator for the Key West Art & Historical Society, "places you have almost been." Art critic Judith Reynolds describes Bentley-Kemp's images as pervaded by "a sense of wonder. It is childlike and sophisticated all at once. The images trigger an aesthetic gasp, they are so beautiful." About two dozen of her photographs can be seen in the Key West Museum of Art & History at the Custom House when her exhibition, Recovering Eden: The Photographer in the Garden, opens Oct. 14 with an artist's wine and cheese reception from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Bentley-Kemp, who holds a doctorate degree in comparative studies from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, has been a resident of Cudjoe Key for five years and a photography and humanities professor at Florida Keys Community College during the past year. "I have always had a curiosity about the aesthetic and historical influences of photography upon society," she said, explaining that the exhibition is a visual interpretation of her doctoral dissertation, which grew out of a personal fascination with pictorial renderings of Eden. "From as far back as I can remember I have had this fascination with Eden," she said. "It is a story that captivated my imagination and flooded me with visions of fecund vegetation, luminous foliage, calm waters and warm, soothing breezes. I could perceive it with all of my senses; I believed I knew it so well. "As I developed as an artist I discovered photography, and Paradise became my muse. I constantly seek to learn more about it. This is the reason I make pictures in the places that resonate with the character of Eden." Bentley-Kemp has created the body of photographs using black and white infra-red film combined with an academic analysis of a romanticized, Edenic landscape. What results is a collection of wide format photographs that combine archival digital printing techniques with traditional silver based photography. "My landscapes are ideals, not actual places in the naturalist's sense of reality, she said. "They are a state of mind." Prior to entering the comparative studies program at Florida Atlantic, Bentley-Kemp was an associate professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y. During her years at there she taught courses in fine art, gallery management and photography, served as director of the school's photography gallery and acted as support faculty for deaf students in the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences. From 1996 to 1999, she served as chair of the Fine Art Photography Department at the institute. The exhibition, which runs through Dec. 3, is part of the Museum of Art & History's ongoing Artists-In Season program series, which features the work of talented local painters, sculptors, photographers and other visual artists. The exhibit is made possible in part by a grant from the Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources, Historical Museums Grants-In-Aid Program.
-30-
|
| Palm Glade Tropical Garden, Miamiby Lynne Bentley-Kemp |