Opening Reception Thursday, November 9, 5-9 PM.
On campus: Bevier Gallery, Booth Hall (Parking in Lot E/F)

Free // All Welcome

Patti Ambrogi describes the inspiration for The Geography of Desire with her appreciation for walking and finding her way to a first growth tree in a nature preserve held by the Nature Conservancy:

 “Close to home, I discovered The Bentley Woods, a small woodland, hidden within developed land and home to a rare and well documented first growth tree. Sitting with this tree for many years and watching the world from her perspective, I made the first image in the Geography of Desire, The View from the Oldest Tree.”

Describing the evolution of her work, Ambrogi writes: “My attention to the forms of nature evolved and I continued to walk, near and as far as The Great Walks in New Zealand.  I borrow the historic formalism of early landscape photography and painting, and its conventions for framing the beauty of life forms, and the wilderness.”

Ambrogi has photographed sites of preservation across the United States and Canada.

“The Rock Angel is a sculpture created by nature over time, in rose quartz rock on a boundary island of the Canadian Archipelago. The rose quartz, which forms her body, is a stone treasured for relationship and love. When you make your way through the waters of Georgian Bay and over the land surrounding The Rock Angel and use your powers of observation, you will find her holding the waters of Lake Huron in her outstretched arms as the waters wash across her body and onto the lake beyond.”

Ambrogi records the natural world with multiple exposures for light and planes of focus, using a 36-megapixel DSLR camera, much like an early 20th century view camera with modern capabilities. She stitches the digital layers of focus and tonality together in a gradual and painterly process with Photoshop.

“The pictures represent our relationship with the environment and how we practice our social and political roles with our journeys on this earth, our political negotiations of land use, and most importantly our attention to global warming and environmental policy. Our relationship with the land is our oldest story.”

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Patti Ambrogi is a professor Emerita from the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences at RIT. She holds a BFA from SUNY Albany and an MFA from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. As a student she studied a year abroad at the University of Siena in Italy, taking summer classes at The Shakespeare Institute, Oxford University, England.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibits at Tokyo Polytechnic Institute in Japan, the Visual Studies Workshop, the Center for Book Arts in NYC, and The Boston CyberArtsFestival, at the Photographic Resource Center in Boston, as well as the Menschel Gallery at Syracuse University, the Memorial Art Gallery and the George Eastman House in Rochester.

Ambrogi has lectured about moving media and the still photographer. She is the founder of the Media Café at RIT, a curriculum that promoted the production of temporal work crossing disciplines and media. She is also the recipient of RIT’s Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Contribution for Teaching and the Honored Educator Award at the 2012 Regional Society for Photographic Education.

To view Ambrogi’s work visit her website:

www.pattiambrogiphotography.com.

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