A piece by American master photographer Paul Caponigro provided guest curator John O’Hern* inspiration for this exhibition. O’Hern generously has loaned the Houghton Gallery this piece and we are privileged to have it on view. O’Hern, who recently moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, says, “Paul Caponigro has been a photographer idol since the days when I actually produced photographs and had a traveling solo exhibition in Europe.... My piece of his, “Forest — St. Marie-Oudenhove, Flanders”, is one of my prized possessions and one of the few works I brought to New Mexico.  It was many years after first seeing his work that I was able to afford one.”

Born in Boston in 1932, Paul Caponigro is recognized as one of America’s most significant photographers and is currently regarded as one of America’s foremost landscape photographers

O’Hern further explains his selections for Trees, “John Doddato is a classic photographer, having mastered film, paper and chemicals to produce images that rival earlier masters such as Caponigro and Ansel Adams.  He and the others go for the big view.  Andrew Gillis goes for the close-up, nearly abstract view of nature in stunning images that cause us to look more closely at our surroundings.”

*John O’Hern is a contributing editor to American Art Collector and Western Art Collector magazines, and an independent curator and writer.