Carroll Takes Formalist Approach To Photography
Asbury Park resident Dennis Carroll's photographs are not about emotion, but about the juxtaposition and intersection of space, lines and shapes. Their stark reality expresses, at the same time, a clear artistic beauty.
Expansive natural settings are a backdrop yet central to sharp depictions of the mathematical designs found in buildings or in natural elements.
"In my case, it's not so much to create an emotional expression. I'm more a formalist," Carroll, 67, says of his work. "It has to do with an intellectual approach, with balancing the components to create a resolution of photographic problems."
Twenty-plus photographs — scenes of Asbury Park, Seaside Heights, Vermont, Cape Cod and the Hudson Valley in New York — are on display in "Caught," an exhibit that opens Wednesday at The Paint Place Gallery in Asbury Park. The show's title refers to how the camera catches an image.
"I shoot as the spirit moves me. Sometimes I plan. I'll go visit a site, such as Hudson Valley, where friends live, and shoot all day," he adds. "Other times, I have my camera with me, and something will grab me. I hate to say it, but I don't always have my camera with me, and I miss a moment."
Painting, theater background
Although he has been a photographer since attending Montclair State University, where he received bachelor's and master's degrees in fine art, early on he focused on painting abstractions in acrylic.
Digital photography sped up his focus on photography, he says.
"One of the things I enjoy most about it is the problem-solving nature of playing with it on the computer. How do you enhance the photo to make it not only show but meet the image you have in your mind?"
Such enhancement doesn't rob work of its realism, he says.
"It's very much like representational painting. Most people think it's an accurate record of what the painter saw," he says. "In most cases, it's not. It's been altered because of what the artist has seen and wants to emphasize."
Carroll began photographing scenes in Asbury Park several years before moving to the city in 2003, a year after retiring as the Ridgewood school district supervisor of arts in Bergen County. At the high school, where he taught art and was director of the theater program, the art gallery was named for him upon his retirement.
"There was something about the wide open spaces of the beach here. I'm really interested in my paintings, too, in open space, empty space, and whether that can be divided by a horizon line or the edge of a building," he says.
Architecture draws his creative eye in the same way.
Carroll says he's so absorbed in shooting the architecture and landscapes of Asbury Park, he hasn't painted in several years.
Taken From APP.com
Expansive natural settings are a backdrop yet central to sharp depictions of the mathematical designs found in buildings or in natural elements.
"In my case, it's not so much to create an emotional expression. I'm more a formalist," Carroll, 67, says of his work. "It has to do with an intellectual approach, with balancing the components to create a resolution of photographic problems."
Twenty-plus photographs — scenes of Asbury Park, Seaside Heights, Vermont, Cape Cod and the Hudson Valley in New York — are on display in "Caught," an exhibit that opens Wednesday at The Paint Place Gallery in Asbury Park. The show's title refers to how the camera catches an image.
"I shoot as the spirit moves me. Sometimes I plan. I'll go visit a site, such as Hudson Valley, where friends live, and shoot all day," he adds. "Other times, I have my camera with me, and something will grab me. I hate to say it, but I don't always have my camera with me, and I miss a moment."
Painting, theater background
Although he has been a photographer since attending Montclair State University, where he received bachelor's and master's degrees in fine art, early on he focused on painting abstractions in acrylic.
Digital photography sped up his focus on photography, he says.
"One of the things I enjoy most about it is the problem-solving nature of playing with it on the computer. How do you enhance the photo to make it not only show but meet the image you have in your mind?"
Such enhancement doesn't rob work of its realism, he says.
"It's very much like representational painting. Most people think it's an accurate record of what the painter saw," he says. "In most cases, it's not. It's been altered because of what the artist has seen and wants to emphasize."
Carroll began photographing scenes in Asbury Park several years before moving to the city in 2003, a year after retiring as the Ridgewood school district supervisor of arts in Bergen County. At the high school, where he taught art and was director of the theater program, the art gallery was named for him upon his retirement.
"There was something about the wide open spaces of the beach here. I'm really interested in my paintings, too, in open space, empty space, and whether that can be divided by a horizon line or the edge of a building," he says.
Architecture draws his creative eye in the same way.
Carroll says he's so absorbed in shooting the architecture and landscapes of Asbury Park, he hasn't painted in several years.
Taken From APP.com
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