Henry Wessel: Early Photographs

Henry Wessel: Early Photographs, January 18 - February 24, 2007 at Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco, CA. "...For over thirty years Henry Wessel (b. 1942) has lived, worked and taught in the San Francisco Bay Area. He started experimenting with photography in the early 60's while still a student at Pennsylvania State University. By 1968, Wessel was taking photographs while traveling the country. A 1971 grant from John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to document the 'U.S. highways and the adjacent landscape' focused Wessel's subject matter on man-made environments, sometimes populated, and sometimes not. What might be ordinary moments and places (almost empty deserts, fatigued split level houses, cinderblock motels, people caught in personal reverie, parking lots, odd shaped bushes and trees) become exceptional from Wessel's vantage. Crafted with formal perfection, a pretense of seriousness, and gentle sympathy, Wessel's photographs illuminte and freeze a glimpse of American life."