Photo by Taylor Lund
Evening Calla Lilies by Ryan Tischer
By Taylor Lund
The Kruk Gallery is hosting the Visual Arts Photography Alumni Exhibit. Derrick Burbul, Victor Pagona, and Ryan Tischer were the three artists whose work was displayed.
Derrick Burbul is an associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Kearney, where he teaches photography. Burbul exhibited a series titled, “Myths of the West Series”. His photos are in the form of a tintype. A tintype is a 19th-century form of photography where the photo is developed onto a thin tin plate. Instead of living subjects, he uses mostly western action figures. The tintype form makes his photos look old-fashioned, like you’re looking at them in an old photo album. They look like he took them in a past century, which is also related to the color of his photos. All of them are brown and black, like an old photograph would be. Compared to most photographs taken today, his seem to demand a past perception.
Victor Pagona is the Chair of the Photography Department at the Southwest School of Art located in San Antonio, Texas. For his photographs he modified an iphone’s camera and took close up shots of plant-life. His tight framing and shallow depth of field, allows the subject to be the only focus without there being distraction of background material. The work shows how much complexity there is in even the smallest of objects.
Local artist Ryan Tischer used large-scale canvases to display expansive landscape images. His photos are not in a series but all have a similar theme of wildlife and the beauty of nature. He uses the lighting as a strong advantage in his photographs. The photos seem as if they are radiating light.
If you have an interest in photography or want to see various ways of displaying photographs, the Visual Arts Photography Alumni Exhibit will be open to view until December 9.
