Opening Reception: The Lost Garden Photographic Exhibition at the Alexander Heath Contemporary Gallery

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Mary Zompetti

Frozen Frog from Lake Champlain, Silver Gelatin Print from 8x10 Cameraless Negative

This solo exhibition will feature 38 cameraless photographs by Hollins University photography professor Mary Zompetti.

The photographs in The Lost Garden series are created by exposing large-format film and paper to environmental conditions over extended periods of time. The physical remains of wildlife and other remnants of the natural world are placed on the surface – a starling frozen in the depths of winter, a woodpecker electrocuted by overhead power lines, plants and flowers gone by. Bodily fluids and plant matter putrefy, and these deteriorating effects are physically recorded. Light and weather further alter the film, cracking and pulling the delicate silver emulsion. Both delicate and resilient, the film becomes an imprint of the fragile body and a map-like record of time and place during this particular moment when our natural environment is on the precipice of irreversible change.