Nordic Heritage Museum announces autumn’s visiting exhibition

By Joe Veyera

The newest body of work from a Ballard photographer will be on display at the Nordic Heritage Museum as this autumn’s visiting exhibition.

The Color of Time: Ballard from Dusk to Dawn, by photographer Tod Gangler, takes a look at 21st century Ballard and will be on view from September 19 to November 16.

According to the press release announcing the exhibition:

Gangler’s photographs are made with a unique process that includes a long exposure time, which not only creates beautiful, intriguing images, but also alludes to the rich history of the art and science of photography. The effect of these long exposures is a sense in the photographs that time is collapsed, segmented out, and emphasized. The images also highlight which elements are in motion, and which stand still. Driving cars are nothing but streaks of light and bar-goers look ghostly, but buildings and backgrounds are still.

Gangler, who lives and works in Ballard, has devoted himself to mastering tricolor photography and color carbon printing, processes that inventors were experimenting with in the very earliest decades of photography. For several years, Gangler has been loading old film cameras with black and white film, and making three separate photographs of each scene though red, green and blue filters.  After developing his negatives, Tod prints them onto homemade, pigmented gelatin emulsions of rich cyan, magenta and yellow pigment.

In conjunction with “The Color of Time” exhibit, the museum will also play host to, “Home Sweet Home,” an installation work and related drawings by French artist Laurence Landois, guest-curated by Laurie LeClair from September 12-30. The work is inspired by the story of Edith Macefield, who turned down an offer of $1 million to sell her Ballard home to make way for commercial development.

(Photos courtesy of the Nordic Heritage Museum)