Exhibit at Holden Luntz in Palm Beach highlights cutting-edge printing for photographs

As times change, so does the way we express ourselves.

From the early days of recording a film negative on paper, photographs have become an essential part of history, documenting fashion and celebrities, as well as breaking news, wars, politicians and landscapes. Capturing and exhibiting an immediate image is now considered vital to contemporary society, and now, the work of  a group of photographers is on display at the Holden Luntz Gallery’s as part of “The Immediate Image” exhibit. The show runs through June 18.

Holden Luntz Gallery recently hosted an opening with five of the photographers — Harry Benson, Michael Eastman, Xan Padron, Lawrence Schiller and Joyce Tenneson — who discussed their work. The other photographers in the exhibit are Andre Lichtenberg, Douglas Kirkland, Ken Browar and Deborah Ory, Jim Lee and Melvin Sokolsky.

The images showcase the printing process of sublimation onto metal, a fairly recent development. The process allows a no-glare print and reduces the risk of damage from humidity and sunlight. “The Immediate Image” highlights exceptional and historic photographs that have been regularly printed on paper, but are now shown through the sublimated aluminum process.

“It’s something that over the past five years, we’ve had more and more of the gallery artists using this process and ... it’s pretty spectacular,” said gallery owner Holden Luntz. “We called the show ‘The Immediate Image’ because this method makes everything very, very powerful. The image is not behind glass, and so everything speaks with a different kind of authority and view than works under glass on paper.

“All of these artists have had an extensive career on paper, each of them using different methods, and now with the works printed on metal it looks different and feels different rather than something seen under glass.”

This process creates high-definition, visually stunning archival and fade-resistant images, Luntz said.

'Radiant Beings'

For photographer Tenneson, who is known for her serene, intimate portraits, the pandemic presented a special challenge, as she was confined to her apartment in West Palm without the ability to use her studio. Her sanctuary, she said, became the garden at The Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach and she would go there several times a week.

“During the pandemic, and being alone and isolated and separated from people, I started seeing flowers like people,” said Tenneson, a long-time workshop teacher at the Maine Media center. “I would walk to the Four Arts most days, and that is where my work in this show, my flower series was shot,” she said. The series is called “Radiant Beings.”

“I love connecting with people, and I love connecting with plants in the same way. So, I didn’t photograph just the blooms. I became fascinated by the whole life cycle of the plant and flower. Sometimes they are more beautiful when the petals become more golden and start dying and withering and have a transcendent look.

“Whenever I shoot, I just know I want something I haven’t seen before,” said Tenneson. “After a lot of experimentation, I found that putting my camera on a tripod and using long exposures, often between two and three minutes, gave the photos a more mysterious atmosphere with the flowers moving when the wind blew or the light changed. Sometimes the images were a mess, but then sometimes it is magical," she added.

Tenneson said she was an early advocate of the sublimation process. “The prints are so beautiful and more luminous. Images just glow with this process, it really suits my work.”

All of the photographers in this exhibit produced their works through Blazing Editions in East Greenwich, Rhode Island.

'Time Lapse'

Padron photographs images of large solid-colored painted walls in various cities. The images, part of his series called “Time Lapse” captures people walking past the walls in the course of a few hours. He then layers the images of each person and puts them together digitally to create  pictures of people walking back and forth.

“I set up my tripod at a distance, and I never interact with the people,” said Padron. “It is about a moment in time in a random place, and it’s my way of documenting cities that I visit.”

As a younger talent, Padron’s work bookends Benson’s Beatles and Warhol images, Eastman’s Cuba images and Schiller’s Marilyn Monroe images.

“These photographers are all national treasures,” said Luntz. “And we put together such disparate artists for this show because we wanted something really exciting for a return opening after the pandemic isolation, something special,” said Luntz.

“I am used to talking about artists, I am used to talking about their work, but I am basically just a stand-in for them and watching what this advanced technology is doing is an incredible honor.”

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IF YOU GO:

The exhibit is free and open to the public 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday, at 332 Worth Ave., Palm Beach, 561-805-9550, www.holdenluntz.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: New technique for photos on display at Palm Beach exhibit