Platinum Visions: Photographs by Thomas John Shillea

Wed, 07/02/2014 – Sun, 09/28/2014

Payne Hurd Gallery

Thomas Shillea’s photographs capture a full range of human feeling, from the poetic and spiritual to the dramatic and sensual. What is most striking is his consistency of vision: in portraits of ordinary people, studio nudes, drag queens, or celebrities, including Sissy Spacek and Coretta Scott King. Currently the Director of Art Programs at Northampton Community College, Shillea has an MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology. There, he revived the nineteenth-century printing process called the Platinotype that was popular with pictorial photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen. Platinum prints have a subtly and richness not found in traditional gelatin silver prints and allow individual hand control, as the emulsion is applied with a brush.

Weston, Edward, American, 1886-1958 ,Tina Modotti Reciting Poetry, 1924, Platinum print, 10” x 8”