Charles March: Seascape
Venus Over Los Angeles is pleased to present SEASCAPE, a series of new photographs by acclaimed photographer Charles March. The exhibition follows WOOD LAND shown at Venus Over Manhattan in January 2015 and Abstract & Intentional exhibited at Hamiltons in London in February 2015.
March started taking photographs at the age of twelve. After leaving school at 16, he worked as an apprentice to Stanley Kubrick on Barry Lyndon. After working briefly as a reportage photographer in Africa, March launched a hugely successful career in still life advertising photography, working on many of the great campaigns of the 1980s including Benson & Hedges, Levi鈥檚, and ICI. One of his pictures was selected for the Pompidou Centre鈥檚 permanent exhibition 鈥極ne Hundred Images of Advertising Photography from 1930-1990鈥�. In 1991, after 15 years in the industry and the top prize from that year鈥檚 AFAEP Awards, family responsibility called March back to the Goodwood estate in Sussex, owned by his family since the late 17th century.
While March retired from the world of advertising, he maintained his personal passion for taking pictures. Throughout the 1990s he experimented with different techniques and digital camera technology, and in 2002 he conceived the idea of 鈥榰sing the camera as a brush.鈥� March creates his energized photographs through a fluid movement of the camera during exposure. This transient process results in a bold impression or stirring feeling, much like a personal sketch or drawing. In 2012, he publicly exhibited the Nature Translated series, which for him represented the antithesis of the precision of high production still life advertising of the 1990s. Nature Translated went on to be exhibited in the State Russian Museum (Marble Palace) in St. Petersburg, and the Moscow Photography Biennale 2014 (curated by Olga Sviblova).
This new series of pictures marks a departure for March from his abstract photographs of trees and wooded landscapes to focus his attention on the sea, trying to capture something of its ethereal feeling. For this exhibition he focused on just one short stretch of the Atlantic coast off the island of Eleuthera. The pictures in this exhibition were all shot over four years at various times in the year.
The well-known curator, William Ewing, writes: 鈥楾here is great variety in this set of Charles March pictures. They are never entirely abstract: one perceives clearly what is land and what is water. Sometimes the sea seems very benign; sometimes it threatens, like a towering wall about to crash down upon us. Some pictures seem as if glimpsed from the window of a bullet train, the sun glinting off the surface. Disconcerting are one or two pictures with tilted horizons, upsetting our most cherished notions of the earth鈥檚 fundamental order.鈥�
Of this series, March says: 鈥楾he 鈥榝eeling鈥� of a place is what I am most interested in. The sea and the seascape view, looking out across the horizon, never changes 鈥� it is an eternal view looking out to infinity. It is, if you like, a very deep look at the earth and how we see it. The sea is also a boundary, a line, something to cross or not. It is calming, inspiring and often dangerous. The exploration of that in-between space is an important part of this for me, the liminal space between sea and shore. In one sense it is always moving and changing and in another it is constant. It is kind of a no-man鈥檚 land, a place of transition. Somewhere that exists one minute and not the next 鈥� an invisible boundary. At the same time inviting you in and keeping you out, beckoning and dismissing.鈥�
Venus Over Los Angeles is pleased to present SEASCAPE, a series of new photographs by acclaimed photographer Charles March. The exhibition follows WOOD LAND shown at Venus Over Manhattan in January 2015 and Abstract & Intentional exhibited at Hamiltons in London in February 2015.
March started taking photographs at the age of twelve. After leaving school at 16, he worked as an apprentice to Stanley Kubrick on Barry Lyndon. After working briefly as a reportage photographer in Africa, March launched a hugely successful career in still life advertising photography, working on many of the great campaigns of the 1980s including Benson & Hedges, Levi鈥檚, and ICI. One of his pictures was selected for the Pompidou Centre鈥檚 permanent exhibition 鈥極ne Hundred Images of Advertising Photography from 1930-1990鈥�. In 1991, after 15 years in the industry and the top prize from that year鈥檚 AFAEP Awards, family responsibility called March back to the Goodwood estate in Sussex, owned by his family since the late 17th century.
While March retired from the world of advertising, he maintained his personal passion for taking pictures. Throughout the 1990s he experimented with different techniques and digital camera technology, and in 2002 he conceived the idea of 鈥榰sing the camera as a brush.鈥� March creates his energized photographs through a fluid movement of the camera during exposure. This transient process results in a bold impression or stirring feeling, much like a personal sketch or drawing. In 2012, he publicly exhibited the Nature Translated series, which for him represented the antithesis of the precision of high production still life advertising of the 1990s. Nature Translated went on to be exhibited in the State Russian Museum (Marble Palace) in St. Petersburg, and the Moscow Photography Biennale 2014 (curated by Olga Sviblova).
This new series of pictures marks a departure for March from his abstract photographs of trees and wooded landscapes to focus his attention on the sea, trying to capture something of its ethereal feeling. For this exhibition he focused on just one short stretch of the Atlantic coast off the island of Eleuthera. The pictures in this exhibition were all shot over four years at various times in the year.
The well-known curator, William Ewing, writes: 鈥楾here is great variety in this set of Charles March pictures. They are never entirely abstract: one perceives clearly what is land and what is water. Sometimes the sea seems very benign; sometimes it threatens, like a towering wall about to crash down upon us. Some pictures seem as if glimpsed from the window of a bullet train, the sun glinting off the surface. Disconcerting are one or two pictures with tilted horizons, upsetting our most cherished notions of the earth鈥檚 fundamental order.鈥�
Of this series, March says: 鈥楾he 鈥榝eeling鈥� of a place is what I am most interested in. The sea and the seascape view, looking out across the horizon, never changes 鈥� it is an eternal view looking out to infinity. It is, if you like, a very deep look at the earth and how we see it. The sea is also a boundary, a line, something to cross or not. It is calming, inspiring and often dangerous. The exploration of that in-between space is an important part of this for me, the liminal space between sea and shore. In one sense it is always moving and changing and in another it is constant. It is kind of a no-man鈥檚 land, a place of transition. Somewhere that exists one minute and not the next 鈥� an invisible boundary. At the same time inviting you in and keeping you out, beckoning and dismissing.鈥�
Artists on show
