Opening Reception and Talk with Exhibition Curator Thomas Padon
Saturday, May 21, 6 to 8 pm
Parrish Council Preview, 5 pm

The pervasiveness of the garden as subject matter in contemporary photography prompted the idea for this nationally traveling exhibition that focuses on work created over the last decade by 15 American and European artists. The concept of the garden as tranquil haven or as locus of tension, where beauty coexists with the relentless forces of nature, is explored in these photographs of gardens from Indonesia to Great Britain, from Brazil to our own East End of Long Island, revealing myriad responses to the inherent physical structure, atmosphere, and symbolism found there.

From Monet's fabled garden at Giverny, exquisitely captured by Sally Apfelbaum, to Daniel Boudinet's visual essay on Little Sparta, the renowned garden of sculptor Ian Hamilton Finlay, the works in this exhibition present gardens as signifiers of culture and emblematic of their time. Linda Hackett's chromogenic prints of East End gardens are characterized by unusual perspectives and extreme close-ups. Using a pinhole camera that requires long exposures, Hackett records the movement of the plants in the wind and the subtle changes of light, in effect making nature an active part of the photographic process.

In a special commission for this exhibition, Catherine Opie has photographed gardens ranging from elegant estates in Southampton to community gardens in New York City to a men's prison in Minneapolis.

Sally Mann traveled to the jungles of San Luis Postosí in Mexico to photograph Las Pozas, the legendary garden of English poet, architect, and Surrealist patron Edward James. The conceptual artist Gregory Crewdson built and photographed a series of elaborate "gardens" in his studio. Characterized by lurid colors and surreal juxtapositions of seemingly organic forms, these works allude to the garden as a place where bizarre-and sometimes sinister- elements lie just beneath the tranquil surface.