Dark Room at The Grandel: Friday, 3 March 2017

Join us for the opening reception of the first exhibition in our new home, "Donald McKenna: The Theatre of Buildings" - during First Fridays in Grand Center (6-9pm).

Through four decades, Mr. McKenna has pursued the “narrative possibilities of a place or thing." First, he uses a 4×5 film camera that slows his process down. The large format film makes him more contemplative of what he encounters and makes his compositions more considered. Second, he is sensitive to the theatre of buildings, or to put it another way, the fact that a building is a stage where human actors perform the drama of their lives. He looks for the traces of these lives lived, which in his photographs reverberate a familiar quality that the viewer can always recognize, if not always summarize. Very simply, McKenna’s photographs present the stage after the performance has ended in a way that echoes, alludes to or commemorates what has occurred there.