Glen echo Photoworks
IN THE NEWS
Marc Cary, tick, tick…BOOM!, and More Best Bets for Jan. 25–31
Review by Louis Jacobson
The Washington City Paper
January 24th, 2024
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"Walter Plotnick’s pair of exhibits at Photoworks are decidedly inventive—fanciful, even. To create one series about circus performers, Plotnick, a Philadelphia-based artist, begins with vintage photographs, scans them, prints the resulting images onto clear Mylar, then exposes them and other geometric shapes to photosensitive paper in the darkroom, before digitally fine-tuning and printing the works in cool-toned black-and-white..."
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A Capital Summer, featuring images by John McDonnell, PW Regular
Visual Journal by WP Staff
The Washington Post
September 1st, 2023
"A park reinvented after desegregation:
During the 1960 Glen Echo Amusement Park sit-ins, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland bought Black demonstrators tickets to ride the carousel so they could protest segregation at the park, in Montgomery County, Md. The park has been desegregated since 1961, and is now is a haven for artists and summer visitors. Washington Post photojournalist John McDonnell went there several times this summer to chronicle how the park has been changed and reinvented..."
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Review by Mark Jenkins
The Washington Post
June 23rd, 2023
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"The winners of Photoworks’ annual photo slams are chosen during public slide shows where the audience voices its approval. To judge by the latest results, the crowd had eclectic tastes. This year’s champs are Anh Tran, who makes lustrous black-and-white portraits; Smita Parida, whose artfully posed photograms involve cicadas; and Thomas Wanat who submitted a single stunning image of a glacial lagoon in Iceland....."
2022 Was a Standout Year for Local Photography
Review by Louis Jacobson
Washington City Paper
December 20th, 2022
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"Timeless: Historic Photographic Processes in the Digital Age, at Photoworks, delighted in experimenting with archaic photographic techniques, from platinum-palladium printing to blue-tinged cyanotypes to the obscure Ziatype process. The standouts in the group show were Mac Cosgrove-Davies and Paige Billin-Frye. Cosgrove-Davies’ works range from tiny, jewel-like images to impressive larger ones made with the dreamy gum-bichromate process, including a hazy, extreme-horizontal landscape of the Hudson River Valley..."
Jenny Wu’s Art at Touchstone, and More Best Bets for July 28-Aug. 3
Upcoming Highlight by Louis Jacobson
Washington City Paper
July 28th, 2022
"Timeless: Historic Photographic Processes in the Digital Age is an exercise in time travel, offering evidence that several archaic photographic techniques still have some life left in them. Sebastian Hesse-Kastein uses a pinhole camera and a platinum-palladium printing process developed in the 1870s to make gently distorted images of rustic scenes. Using a crisper version of the platinum-palladium process, Rodrigo Barrera-Sagastume documents residents and architecture in Guatemala..."
Review by Mark Jenkins
The Washington Post
January 14th, 2022
"Playing very different editions of the circle game, Yuri Long and Jon Malis conduct a sly duet at Photoworks at Glen Echo Park. Long takes the outside route, with pictures of the moon over Washington. Malis goes inside, in two senses of the word, by photographing his own lighting gear, which is mostly round. Both produce images of luminous orbs that have more in common when photographed than they do in actuality.”
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Review by Mark Jenkins
The Washington Post
January 19th, 2024
"Among photo collagist Walter Plotnick’s most useful tools is the Chinese carryout food container. In “Surprise Inside,” one of two series on exhibit at Photoworks, the Philadelphia-area artist superimposes vintage photographs on images of unfolded boxes. Some of the cartons provide just shapes, textures and shadows, but others are decorated with patterns meant to evoke traditional Chinese culture..."
Review by Mark Jenkins
The Washington Post
Aug 25th, 2023
"African-born photographers Redeat Wondemu and Djibril Drame often shoot portraits, but they stress context, costume and motion and sometimes de-emphasize faces. Wondemu’s pictures, some of which are on exhibit at Photoworks, include a set of blurred self-portraits as she dances with lengths of fabric that occasionally twirl between the lens and her head..."
Event Profile by Eric Jovel
Pro Photo Community Page
March 27th, 2023
"On March 22nd, 2023, Pro Photo DC and Glenecho Photoworks collaborated and brought together an amazing cyanotype workshop that had artists and photographers create their own cyanotypes. Many of the artists who came had never done cyanotype printing and were very eager and happy to start. Mac Cosgrove-Davies from Glen Echo Photoworks instructed the students on how to create unique images...."
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Upcoming Highlight by Louis Jacobson
Washington City Paper
October 27th, 2022
"It’s been about two years since Mark Power died. Called “the father of Washington photography,” Power, along with Frank DiPerna and Joe Cameron, built the photography program at the Corcoran College of Art and Design; through that and other artistic venues, Power influenced multiple generations of D.C.-area photographers, from Colby Caldwell to Chan Chao. Now, Photoworks is mounting a memorial exhibition that features almost three dozen images by the artist."
Profile by F. Lennox Campello
Old Town Crier
July 1st, 2022
"At Glen Echo Park’s Photoworks Gallery, “a group of likeminded photographers presents work that is more than just nostalgia. Each photographer lends her/his own voice with their unique, hand-made images, some of which are augmented by hand tinting. While the images are contemporary, the artisanal nature of the images harkens to an earlier age. The tension between these qualities makes them TIMELESS...”
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Review by Louis Jacobson
Washington City Paper
December 22nd, 2023
"Redeat Wondemu, aka Red Won, is an Ethiopian-born photographer now based in the D.C. area. In an exhibit at Photoworks in Glen Echo, Wondemu offered three series that were radically different in size and approach. One group consisted of small square images of botanical subjects that ranged from simple abstractions to still lives. A second consisted of midsize portraits of women holding flowers, made using gelatin silver and platinum-palladium processes..."
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Profile by Frederick Camera Clique
Frederick Camera Clique
August 21st, 2023
"The September speaker will be Redeat Wondemu, currently the Artist in Residency at Glen Echo's Photoworks. Her solo exhibition, titled "In Syzygy," is a collection of platinum, silver, and cyan hand made prints. The photograph series depicts honesty, emotions, and vulnerability. She travels to Ethiopia, her home country, to work on her pre-conceptualized photography series. Using both film and digital photography, she approaches her sitters with deep thoughtfulness, reverence, and imagination..."
Profile by Library Communications
Arlington Public Library
March 17th, 2023
"In April, join us for the opening reception, a wet plate photography demonstration and a shadowgram sunprinting workshop at Central Library with acclaimed photographer Mac Cosgrove-Davies.
Cosgrove-Davies employed the historic wet plate collodion (or tintype) photography technique to create unique portraits featuring scores of Arlington volunteers..."
Review by Mark Jenkins
The Washington Post
August 5th, 2022
"The photographic processes devised by such 1830s pioneers as Louis Daguerre and William Fox Talbot were influential but soon abandoned. Yet these anachronistic technologies still work, and are employed by contemporary artists such as the seven contributors to “Timeless” at Photoworks. The title of the show refers not only to the enduring utility of early photo methods, but also the slightly eerie quality of contemporary pictures made with 19th-century procedures...”
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Review by Louis Jacobson
Washington City Paper
March 31st, 2022
"I love kitschy Americana as much as the next person, and there’s little to complain about how D.C.-based photographer Philip Taplin has portrayed the greater-than-life-size roadside businesses that operate from buildings shaped like cows, elephants, teapots, and alligator jaws. The gaudy architecture he documents plays off surprisingly well against the unruffled, pastel-hued skies in the background...”
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