Bill Armstrong Photography

Cape Cod Museum of Art Exhibition: December 2011 - February 12, 2012

2012-01-27T10:33:00.000-08:00

Here are some installation shots from my recent exhibition at the Cape Cod Museum of Art:

Installation at the US Consulate, Mumbai

2011-12-19T10:51:00.000-08:00

I recently gave a lecture at the US Consulate in Mumbai, India. My Mandala photographs are now installed there as part of a permanent exhibition which includes work by Anish Kapoor, Linda Bengalis, Steve McCurry, and others.

New York Social Diary

2011-12-10T10:05:00.000-08:00

I was recently featured in New York Social Diary:

Here is a link to the article on the New York Social Diary Website.

Cornell Museum of Fine Arts - Video Installation

2011-02-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

I have some new abstract videos in an installation at the Cornell Museum of Fine Arts. The installation, called "Chromozones," accompanies "The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography." Both shows will be up until March 27, 2011.

http://www.rollins.edu/cfam/exhibitions/index.html

(Scroll down on the linked page to see "Chromozones.")

Here you can see all of the videos:

http://vimeo.com/user5794980

My assistant, Allison Walters helped me edit the videos. She has some great videos on her website. Check them out:

http://www.allisonmwalters.com/videos.html

Check out Thomas Jackson's website

2011-01-31T07:47:00.000-08:00

I saw a website I like recently. Take a look:

http://thomasjacksonphotography.com/

marie taillefer

2011-01-20T10:44:00.001-08:00

I just discovered a photographer I like a lot, Marie Taillefer:

http://www.marysmith.fr/?path=Gallery/showGallery/_contents/04_perso/01_a-mon-pere

Exhibition at Southeast Museum of Photography

2010-11-25T11:53:00.000-08:00

I just got back from visiting the Southeast Museum of Photography. It's a really nice museum and the people are really great.

Bill Armstrong
Spirit: from the Infinity Series

Artist Talk, Book Signing, and Opening Reception

Saturday, November 20

Artist Talk 5:00 pm

Book Signing and Reception 6:00 - 7:00 pm

"A world just beyond our grasp, where place may be suggested, but is never defined, and where the identity of the amorphous figures remains in question. It is a world that might exist in memory, in dreams, or, perhaps, in a parallel universe yet unvisited."

-Bill Armstrong

About the Exhibition

Bill Armstrong

Spirit: from the Infinity Series

November 20, 2010- February 6, 2011

Bill Armstrong's Infinity series transforms re-photographed and appropriated images to create ephemeral, abstracted and de-materialized color fields and strongly evocative iconic figures. Working with source material as diverse as African masks, Roman busts, statuary and other representations, Armstrong's finished figurative and portrait images are powerfully evocative of an unseen presence.
Spirit presents selections from five of the series that make up Bill Armstrong's Infinity project. Working with his unique process of re-photographing appropriated images and subjecting them to a series of manipulations; Armstrong exploits the integrating capacities of camera focus to merge image details, edges and colors to create seamless color fields and mysterious, iconic figures.

"The Mandala and Buddha images refer to Eastern spirituality. Mandalas are concentric circles of images that depict central themes in Buddhism, such as theWheel of Lifeor the Map of the Cosmos. Through abstraction, blur and simplification, I explore these broad themes that remain open and invite the viewer's personal interpretation. The Mandalas change as one gazes into them, pulsating as if alive, and inviting an inquiry into the idea of "being" within the inanimate. The Buddhas address mutability versus permanence; their soft luminosity suggests transcendence.

Masks & Skulls refers to African masks and ideas about "evil spirits." I take concrete objects, with their powerful, symbolic associations of fear and death-what Andre Malraux called "the night side of man"-and subtly shift their meaning by transforming them. The resulting abstractions hold some of the residual dark power of the original object, but are softened, both literally and figuratively, into something illusory and weightless.

In the Apparitions series some of the images are dark, ghoulish visions, yet others are hopeful, spiritual presences. The powerful features of these Romans-emperor and soldier alike-bear witness to the eternal truths of the human condition and the precarious balance of hope and fear.
On another level, the work resonates for me personally. I made these images soon after my father died of cancer, yet it was only later that I understood that I had been trying to communicate with him through the medium of light-sensitive materials. This evidence of the power of subconscious motivation was a revelation to me, and the fact that some of the ghostly images actually resembled my father was uncanny. So Apparition is a personal quest to come to grips with the horror of death and the hope of redemption through image making.
The Figures represent the common household notion of ghosts and spirits. I refer here to the widely-held, late19th century belief that mediumistic photography would prove the existence of ghosts, and to the many hucksters who claimed to prove it with sham pictures. More seriously, I hope the ghosts and silhouettes can be seen as visions of the human soul." -Bill Armstrong

About Bill Armstrong

Bill Armstrong holds a B.A. in art history and an M.B.A. from Boston University. His work has recently been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Gallery Kayafas; ClampArt, New York; Dolby Chadwick, San Francisco; the Silver Eye Center for Photography; DeSantos Gallery; Scott White Contemporary Art; Sara Nightingale Gallery; Hackelbury Fine Art, London; the Griffin Museum of Photography and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Images from the Infinity series have been featured in major group exhibitions at commercial and public galleries in Europe and the US including the Center for Creative Photography, the Center for Fine Art Photography; Houston Center for Photography; the Victoria and Albert Museum; Aperture Foundation; Ambient Art Projects; the DeCordova Museum; the Photographic Resource Center; the International Center of Photography; Forma Centro Internazionale di Fotografia; Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam; Musee De l'Elysee, Lausanne; Recontres D'Arles, Arles and the Hayward Gallery, London.
Armstrong's photographs have appeared in a number of major publications including The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography (2009); Photographic Possibilities(2007); Face: The New Photographic Portrait (2006);Exploring Color Photography(2004) as well as in the Boston Globe; New York Times; Utne Reader and the New Yorker. His work is in numerous public collections including the Brooklyn Museum, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Addison Gallery of American Art; Bibliotheque Nationale de France; Musee De l'Elysee; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Southeast Museum of Photography; Museum of the City of New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Armstrong lives and works in New York where he is also an adjunct faculty at the School of Visual Arts and the International Center of Photography.

Catalogs available in the museum gift shop:

Mandala by Bill Armstrong

Introduction by Katherine Ware

Published and released by Photo-Eye

$20.00 tax included

Like other portfolios in his series Infinity, Armstrong's mandalas are made from collages he creates and then photographs with the camera's focusing ring set on infinity. He then creates chromogenic prints from the resultant negatives. By taking an out-of-focus photograph, the artist concentrates not on detailed form and subject but on the rich, saturated colors that shift and pulsate in relation to one another, inviting an inquiry into the interconnectedness of all things.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2008
44 pp., Numerous color illustrations, 9x9"

Apparition by Bill Armstrong

Introduction by A.D. Coleman

Published and released by Photo-Eye

$20.00 tax included

The mysterious and powerful images in this body of work capture fleeting 'visitations' from the spirit world - visions as they might appear in dreams or heightened states of wakefulness. The photographs are made using Armstrong's unique process of re-working found images and photographing them extremely out of focus. In this case, the original source materials are reproductions of Roman sculpture shot with the camera lens set at infinity.
The meanings underpinning Apparition radiate in a number of directions. While many of the images are dark, ghoulish visions, others are hopeful spiritual presences. For Armstrong, the ghosts of ancient Rome represent particularly appropriate messenders of our time, as we contemplate the fate of our own empire.

Clamp Art, New York, 2005

Unpaged, 16 full-color plates, 8½x11"

For information about other books featuring the photography of Bill Armstrong, visit his website at http://www.billarmstrongphotography.com/books.html

Exhibition Opening Event

Saturday, November 20, 2010

5:00 - 7:00pm

Exhibition opening lecture, book signing, and reception

MUSEUM HOURS

OPEN - Tues, Thurs, Fri: 11-5 pm; Wed: 11-7 pm; Weekends: 1-5 pm
June, July and December Hours: Tues-Sun: 12-4 pm

CLOSED - Mondays and for the following dates:
Easter Sunday, Daytona 500 Weekend, Daytona State College Spring Break, July 4, July 31-August 17, Thanksgiving Weekend, December 17 - January 11

MUSEUM LOCATION

Unless noted otherwise, all museum exhibitions, events and films are presented at the Southeast Museum of Photography which is located on the Daytona Beach campus of Daytona State College at 1200 International Speedway Blvd, three miles east of 1-95.
The museum is located in the Mori Hosseini Center (Bld. 1200).
Visitor parking is available. Gallery Admission is free.

For detailed exhibition and program information visitwww.smponline.org or call the museum information hotline at (386) 506-4475.

Southeast Museum of Photography

A Service of

Daytona State College

1200 W. International Speedway Blvd.
Daytona Beach, FL 32114

(386) 506-4475

www.smponline.org

Victoria & Albert Museum

2010-10-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

Apparition 901 is featured in a small exhibition of New Aquisitions at the V & A. It will be up until May 2011.

Summer Exhibition at Dolby Chadwick

2010-08-15T12:39:00.000-07:00

Here's some press from my show at Dolby Chadwick in San Francisco this summer.

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=39052

http://www.sfbg.com/listing/2010/06/29/our-weekly-picks-june-31-july-6

http://www.sfstation.com/renaissance-bill-armstrong-e932001

Installation shots from my exhibition in London at Hackelbury in June

2010-06-30T10:01:00.000-07:00

Here are some images from my exhibition in London at Hackelbury in June:

Elaine Baker Gallery has images up this season

2010-03-06T04:37:00.000-08:00

Elaine Baker Gallery in Boca Raton, FL has some of my images up. Please stop by if you are in the area.

Pingyao International Photography Festival Sept. 2009

2009-10-03T05:31:00.000-07:00

Here are some installation shots from "The Edge of Vision" Exhibition in Pingyao, China, Spetember 2009.

Signed catalogues are available at Photo Eye

2009-07-08T03:50:00.000-07:00

I have 3 signed exhibition catalogues available at the Photo Eye bookstore:

Mandala
With introduction by Katherine Ware http://photoeye.com/bookstore/mShowDetailsbycatAmazon.cfm?Catalog=ZD537

Renaissance
With introduction by Bill Hunt
http://photoeye.com/bookstore/mShowDetailsbycatAmazon.cfm?Catalog=ZD367

Apparition
With introduction by A. D. Coleman
http://photoeye.com/bookstore/mShowDetailsbycatAmazon.cfm?Catalog=ZC842

Aperture Video

2009-07-08T03:35:00.000-07:00

I was recently invited by the Aperture Foundation to make a video about my work and process. Here's the link: http://vimeo.com/5114909

By Way of these Eyes: The Sublime, Exotic and Familiar

2009-06-17T04:05:00.001-07:00

The Exhibition By Way of these Eyes: The Sublime, Exotic and Familiar is now open at the New Britain Museum in New Britain CT. It features the collection of Christopher Hyland, which includes lots of great classic B&W images. I'm particluarly honored that my color work is in the show.

I will be giving a talk there on August 13th from 5:30 -7:00p with Ellen Carey called "The F-stops here." Come by if you are in the area! The exhibition will continue until Sept. 6, 2009.

Heres the link: http://www.nbmaa.org/

Aperture Exhibtion, The Edge of Vision:The Rise of Abstraction in Photography

2009-06-17T03:48:00.001-07:00

The Aperture Exhibtion, The Edge of Vision:The Rise of Abstraction in Photography has been up for a while now and will stay up until July 16th. Lyle Rexer gave a talk last night to a full house and everybody said he was really "on." He is a great speaker.

Aperture Book: The Edge of Vision

2009-02-28T04:53:00.001-08:00

I am pleased to say that one of my images will be on the cover of the book The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography, by Lyle Rexer, Aperture. The book signing will be on May 16 and there will be an accompanying exhbition. Apertue is located at 547 West 27th Street, NYC.

links to publications

2008-12-10T03:08:00.000-08:00

I'm slowly adding links to some earlier publications:

Here's an interview in Double Exposure
http://www.doubleexposure.com/BAInterview.shtml

And some other articles:

Extreme Blur in ZooZoom
http://www.zoozoom.com/#type=story&id=986

Apparition in ZooZoom
http://zoozoom.com/#type=story&id=69

Eyemazing
http://eyemazing.dev.ticts.nl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11&Itemid=1

link to exhibition: Philadelphia Museum of Art

2008-11-25T13:11:00.000-08:00

I currently have an exhibition in the new Perelman building at the Philadelphia Museum of Art:

http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/330.html

Check out the podcast!

New York Times Article: Focus on Light and Thrift

2008-11-25T12:58:00.000-08:00

There’s a nice article about my photography and my house in Vermont in the Away column in the Escapes section of the New York Times (11/21/08.)
Here’s the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/greathomesanddestinations/21away.html?scp=1&sq=focus%20on%20light%20and%20thrift&st=cse

2008-07-29T05:13:00.000-07:00

My website is: http://www.billarmstrongphotography.com/