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June Kelly Gallery is delighted to present its
ninth photography exhibition
by Charles Martin, spur-of-the-moment portrayals of sights that
caught Martin’s eye and prompted him to capture them through his
lens. The display of intriguing
unintentional shots, primarily from his travels in Rio de Janeiro,
São Luís do Maranhão, Paris, and Algeria, will open at the June
Kelly Gallery, 166 Mercer Street, on Friday, June
26, and remain on
view through July 31, 2026.
Interestingly, the photographs, though
presented in traditional linear installation order, are independent
of one another. Thematically
separate and unconnected, each reflects its own moment of energy,
one that Martin happened upon, witnessed, and captured, as in the
image Tambor de Crioula, São Luís do Maranhão.
The exhibited body of work reflects four
decades of Martin’s complex, absorbed attraction to the natural
world, people, customs, and architecture, with no justification
beyond allowing viewers access to the run of the photographer’s rush
to capture spontaneity.
While Martin says his photographs are usually
unplanned and executed quickly, the sense of an instantaneous,
impressive connection with something about the subject is apparent.
His keen perceptiveness yields
distinctive photographic accounts. Martin’s
vision and ingenious process, rich in narrative potential,
mysterious, and intuitive, are grounded in everyday life.
Martin achieves a balance between the
aesthetic and narrative functions of his images as he observes
people and scenes, without being exclusive in his subject selection.
There is no sense of manipulation of
the image, for what Martin captures already has his breath.
His images appear to reflect the
feeling of the moment he shared the experience. Rather,
one might get the sense that Martin’s inner being is expressed
through objective detachment from his subjects.
His discerning eye is attuned to structure,
design, and the interplay of form, color, and light in his shooting.
Later, his editing and selection
reveal his personal sensitivity and artistic awareness.
His perceptiveness and empathy for
both his subject and its context reflect his ability to organize
form, space, energy, and light into stunning compositions and artful
visual dialogue.
Martin lives and works in New York. He is a
graduate of Yale University, where he also received a master’s
degree and a doctorate in Spanish and Portuguese. He
studied photography at the Yale School of Art with Thomas Roma and
JoAnn Walters. Martin’s photographs have been exhibited in numerous
one-person and group exhibitions throughout the United States,
Europe, and South America. His work
is included in many private and public collections, including The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of
the City of New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Center
for Photography at Woodstock, The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum
at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, the Walter Heun
Collection, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California.
Martin has received grants and fellowships
from numerous institutions, including the Fulbright Scholarship,
Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American
Research, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Research
Foundation of the City University of New York, the Rockefeller
Foundation, the Tinker Foundation, West Virginia University, and
Yale University. Martin also
received the Comenda Maria Firmina Medal of Honor and Diploma
from the Academia Ludovicense de Letras in São Luís do Maranhão and
was elected Sócio Correspondente of the Instituto Histórico e
Geográfico do Maranhão.
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