Local Architecture
Photographic Prints and Daguerrotypes by Robin Dreyer
May 12-June 30, 2010

The prints in this exhibition document intersections between people and the landscape, although people in these pictures are mostly represented by their artifacts. The word "architecture" refers to all of the structures in these photographs—the road, the chair, "and" the tree. The term "local" is meant to indicate the modesty scale of the things I’m looking at. As a point of interest, however, most of these pictures were made near my home in Western North Carolina; a few are from coastal Georgia.

The prints are accompanied by a group of daguerreotypes from an ongoing series of studies of naturally occurring structures. More architecture, even more local—these were made on a table top in my studio.

Making images with a lens requires some connection, however tenuous, with the physical world; you have to put something in front of the lens or you don’t get a picture. As a result, photography is a medium that rewards careful observation. It is this aspect of the medium that attracts me most. My aim here is, at very least, to pass along a few things I have observed, although my larger aspiration is to create some poetry or a little bit of theater.

Robin Dreyer is a photographer, editor, and the communications manager at Penland School of Crafts. His photographs have been published in books, national magazines, and countless Penland publications. They have been exhibited in galleries and in the Asheville Art Museum, which has one of his daguerretoypes in its permanent collection. You can see more of Robin’s work at http://www.rdreyer.com">www.rdreyer.com">http://www.rdreyer.com