This exhibition, organized by family, friends and colleagues, will feature works by distinguished Southern photographer John Scarlata (1949 – 2010).
Living In the Light: A Retrospective was designed in partnership with John Scarlata and exhibited by The Wellington B. Gray Gallery located at East Carolina University in early 2010. Interim Director, Tom Braswell, states in the exhibition catalog “One of the Southeast’s outstanding photographers and educators, John Scarlata has been an image-maker for more than thirty-five years. This exhibition of over one-hundred photographs traces his evolution as an artist from his graduate schoolwork at California Institute for the Arts in the mid-nineteen seventies to his most recent images. Using primarily large format cameras and printing in a variety of photographic media, from 19th century antiquarian processes to digital/inkjet output, Scarlata has created a significant and exquisite body of work. From his early influences by modernist photographers such as Karl Blossfeldt, Edward Weston and Minor White to the alternative methods of viewing the landscape suggested by the New Topographies photographers of the nineteen seventies… Scarlata’s images invoke and evoke nature and man’s interventions in the environment, exploring complex interrelationships and subtle beauty.”
John Scarlata, Cuba. Image courtesy of Rebecca Keeter.
About the artist
A native of Long Island, New York, Scarlata studied photography at Brooks Institute of Photography and California Institute of the Arts, receiving his MFA from the latter in 1976. He subsequently moved to North Carolina and was a Third Century Artist at the Arts Council of Wilson in 1977. Teaching positions at UNC-Charlotte and Penland School of Crafts followed. From 1979 until 1999, Scarlata taught at Virginia Intermont College in Bristol, Virginia. From 1999 until 2010, he served as the chair of the photography program in the Department of Technology, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina. A past chair and conference coordinator of the Society for Photographic Education/Southeast Region, he has been active in the professional development of education in his medium. Scarlata’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including recent shows in Cuba and China.
Additional resources
- Flickr – Official website
- Wellington B. Gray Gallery – Official website