A new exhibition in Silliman College’s Maya’s Room gallery highlights photographer Richard Lenz’s images of the urban landscape.
Lenz’s eponymous show, “Richard Lenz: Photographs,” opened in the gallery space on Aug. 27 with an evening reception. Bringing together a handful of black-and-white photographs by the Baltimore native, the exhibit was curated by last semester’s Maya’s Room coordinators, said Catherine Bui ’19 and Leigh Vila ’17, two of the students currently responsible for the gallery space.
Alluding to the influence of cities on the artist, who studied Fine Arts at Columbia University and currently resides in New York City, the show’s pictures feature snippets of architecture, automobiles, train tracks and foliage — the same types of images that appear in Lenz’s first book, “Photographs,” forthcoming from independent publisher Turtledove Press. Nora May ’17, a student visitor, noted that the photographs’ simple color palette forces the viewer to consider these details. May added that she thought the “drama” of the installation and the presence of the pictures within the gallery space heightened her experience of the artist’s work.
Colleen Kenney ’17, a Silliman College resident who also visited the show, said she appreciated how the exhibition managed to demonstrate the potential for collaboration between students and professional artists — a quality, Kenney explained, that she believes remains very much unique to Maya’s Room.
“While students can hang their own artwork in the space, Maya’s Room also provides the unique opportunity for students to curate exhibitions with professional artists,” Kenney said. “Maya’s Room is one of the only art galleries on campus run by undergraduates, and it makes photography and art more accessible to the student body because we can walk in whenever we want to see incredible artwork.”
“Richard Lenz: Photographs” will remain on view through Sept. 10.