Guns and bullets have a mutual dependency. A gun without ammo becomes just a blunt object. A bullet without a gun’s hammer and chamber can’t generate energy for directed propulsion on its own. In our exhibition we have fine-tuned the focus to concentrate on ammunition, as the bullet alone seems to be the actual instrument of injury.

Bullet Points, an exhibition featuring the work of Deborah Bay, Christopher Colville, Garrett Hansen and Sabine Pearlman, will showcase in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA from January 14 through March 6, 2016. An opening reception takes place on January 14, 7-8:30 p.m. Yorgos Efthymiadis will give the members’ talk at 6:15 PM on his exhibition “Domesticated: Seeing Past Seduction.” The talk is FREE.

“The paradox at work in each photographers’ body of work shown in “Bullet Points” is that there is an allusion to beauty while indirectly stirring, for the viewer, contrasted ideas of chaos, death, and destruction,” says Paula Tognarelli executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography “Since ancient times the act of violence has held our attention, sometimes to the point of desensitization as in the Roman arena,” she says.

About “The Big Bang” Deborah Bay says, “Although I did not intend to make an overt statement about gun violence, the [bullet shot through plexiglas] clearly depicts the immense amount of energy released on impact, requiring little imagination to realize their effect on muscle and bone.”

Photographer Christopher Colville says, “In the long term I want this work to be a more open look at our cultural obsession with violence.”

Each of Garrett Hansen’s “Void” images is created from individual bullet holes from targets he finds at gun ranges. Hansen says, “While shooting is fundamentally a destructive act, by bringing these holes into the darkroom, enlarging them and then processing and printing the results, I am able to balance this destruction with creation.” He also says, “The viewer is presented with something that speaks to the sublime – they are both attractive and terrifying at the same time.”

Sabine Pearlman’s cross-sections of World War II ammunition raise a variety of opposing responses. Pearlman says, “[Ammo is] the intersection of stunning beauty, frightening amorality, exquisitely lethal, exacting craftsmanship, and a whole host of other contradictions.” She also says, “The surprising anatomy and beauty of cross sections reflects a world of intention back at us. It’s a look under the hood, by which you come to realize that each design is very goal-oriented. With some of them, it’s like getting a glimpse into the psychology of warfare. The images are mesmerizing and also tragic.”

Deborah Bay is a Houston artist. She holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from The University of Texas at Austin. She has exhibited throughout the U.S., most recently at wall space gallery in Santa Barbara, Vanderbilt University and the Phoenix Art Museum. The British Journal of Photography has featured her work on its cover, and her images have appeared in a variety of national and international publications. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz.

Born in 1974 in Tucson Arizona Christopher Colville received his BFA in Anthropology and Photography from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and his MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico. He currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona. He has taught in multiple institutions including as a visiting Assistant Professor at Arizona State University as well as working as the photography editor for Prompt Press. His work has been included in both national and international publications and exhibitions. Recent awards include the Ernst Cabat Award through the Tucson Museum of Art, Critical Mass top 50, the Humble Art Foundations New Photography Grant, an Arizona Commission on the Arts Artist Project Grant, a Public Art Commission from the Phoenix Commission on the Arts and an artist fellowship through the American Scandinavian Foundation. His work has been reviewed in national and international publications including the L.A. Times, Boston Globe and GUP Magazine.

Garrett Hansen graduated from Grinnell College as an economics and political science major. He completed his MFA in photography at Indiana University and has taught at several universities in the United States and in Asia. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Photography at the University of Kentucky. Hansen has exhibited in the United States, Europe, Indonesia, and Japan.

Sabine Pearlman is an Austrian born photographer currently living in Los Angeles, California. In 2013 she received the LensCulture Emerging Photographer Award for her AMMO series. The series went viral and has since been featured by PHOTO+ Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, WIRED, Der Stern, Esquire (UK), NEON Magazine (France), World of Knowledge (Australia), among many others. Her work has been exhibited internationally, most notably at PYO Gallery South in Seoul, Korea as a solo exhibition, entitled “Fatal Beauty.“

Boston Globe Article by Mark Feeney

Elin Spring highlights “Bullet Points”

Three artists highlighted in The Winchester Star