Guest Curator: Laurel Ptak

April 6, 3:00-5:00 Opening reception

May 4, 2:00-4:00 Free Art Workshop: I photograph New Jersey

May 4, 4:00-5:00pm Guided gallery tour: Lead by curator Laurel Ptak

May 22, 7:30-9:30 pm Panel Discussion The Google Aesthetic: Photography, Technology, and the Internet.

Gallery hours: Friday, Saturday, Sunday 1:00-4:00 and by appointment.

Over 1, 000 images on view that respond to the question by more than 180 artists from 18 countries including Argentina, Australia, Cambodia, Denmark, France, Germany, ireland, Lithuania, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Sweden, as well as many states from the U.S.

This exhibition is made possible in part by funds from New Jersey State Council of the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment of the Arts.

The Star-Ledger Front Page Article: March 26, 2008

“Is it Possible to Make a Photograph of New Jersey regardless of where you are in the world?”

April 6-May 25, 2008

(SOUTH ORANGE, NJ ) - The Pierro Gallery of South Orange will present the exhibition “Is it possible to make a photograph of New Jersey regardless of where you are in the world?” from April 6—May 25, 2008. With guest curator Laurel Ptak, founder and curator of the blog, I Heart Photograph, photographers, designers, and artists of all kinds were invited to participate in this global open call for work asking a question that has broad implications for the art world, technology, communications and source of information. The Opening Reception will be held Sunday, April 6, 2:00-4:00.

This exhibition is literally putting New Jersey on the global map through a conceptual correlation. The title question offers exploration into the ways that digital technologies impact how we see, circulate, and understand information, culture, and specificity of place, particularly in light of our global communication system, the internet. And the test theme is...New Jersey

With Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr and other search engines offering global information instantly from any location, the questions posed: Are ideas about place dramatically different since the internet has allowed people to participate in culture on such a global scale? Despite the endless stream of information and images available through mass media, are there limits to how one perceives, imagines, and understands the world? For instance, exactly how does someone picture New Jersey and what would they say about it in a photograph?

Within the first week the call had been put out on the internet, the website www.aphotographofnewjersey.com had generated 3,800+ pageviews, with visitors from 58 different countries and every single continent except Antarctica. Over 100 photographs were submitted that first week with entries pouring in from: the Netherlands, Thailand, Ireland, Slovakia, France, Canada, and all across the US (including New Jersey, New York, California, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Louisiana, Washington DC, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Texas). Hundreds more entries continued to flow in from all over as the call continued.

Extending the exploration of ways that digital technologies impact how people see, circulate, and understand art, works for the exhibition will be submitted, curated, and produced exclusively through the internet. Images were encouraged through various means: shot with a digital camera, scanned, appropriated, screengrabbed, photoshopped, made with a camera phone… it didn’t matter so long as the final files were able to be transmitted digitally. Work chosen f