William Mortensen (1897 - 1965) was an American Photographer, primarily known for his Hollywood portraits in the 1920s-1940s in the pictorialist style.

Mortensen began his photographic career taking portraits of Hollywood actors and film stills. In 1931, after being blacklisted and excommunicated from Hollywood, Mortensen moved to the artist community of Laguna Beach, CA where he opened a studio and the William Mortensen School of Photography.

He preferred the pictorialism style of manipulating photographs to produce romanticist painting-like effects. The style brought him criticism from straight photographers of the modern realist movement and, in particular, he carried on a prolonged written debate with Ansel Adams. His arguments defending romanticism photography led him to be "ostracized from most authoritative canons of photographic history. Recent years have brought praise for Mortensen's development of manipulation techniques and a renewed interest in his work

FEATURED IN:

Witches and Peasants by Eve Khan

William Mortensen's 20th Century Photos Are

Some Of The Most Beautifully Terrifying Images Ever Made

"A Pictorial Compendium of Witchcraft" July 2014 "Monsters and Madonnas" August 2014

Through the traditional wet plate collodion process, Garrett has created images of feminine enchantment that feel out of time and otherworldly. These pictures are haunting and sensual at once, giving intimate glimpses into his dark muses rituals, while managing to never lose their mystery. Using camera as scrying mirror, Garrett is a magician unto himself, bringing us visual messages from the beyond.

Are art and magick one and the same? Why do witches still have such allure? And who are Garrett's enigmatic women in the woods?

Rik Garrett was born and raised in Washington State. Growing up next to his mothers darkroom provided a life-long focus on analog photographic experimentation. This combined with long-term fixations on the subjects of witchcraft, feminine archetypes and humankind's relationship with nature led to the Earth Magic series, photographed with the wet plate collodion process. His work has been exhibited around the United States and Europe. Garrett currently lives in Chicago, where he recurrently teaches in the photography department at School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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"With Earth Magic I've envisioned a matristic, nature-based world; a female-centric, ritualistic community completely apart from the rest of society. This is a history of witchcraft devoid of witch hunts, a race of women who draw their energy and inspiration from the Earth itself. What if there were a truth to the myths of Amazons and the books like Aradia, Gospel of the Witches? What if the fierce Maenads of Greek mythology still existed today, hidden from view? What if these truths were presented faithfully?" Rik Garrett.

Stephen Romano Gallery is pleased to present the first ever New York solo exhibition of works by Chinese artist Lu Zhang. Lu's photographic and video performance works are based on her nostalgia and longing for the covert shamanic practices of her homeworld, which she uses to exorcise herself of unwanted excess emotional attachments and baggage. Lu Zhang will be presenting a series of photographic and video works entitled "All The Lost Souls" which is an attempt to conjure through memory, ritual, unleashing of sexual energies as well as through a detachment from all thing that bind us to our past (such as home, family, relations) the spirits that dwell in the landscape of our ecosystem as well as the spirits of the inner landscape. Lu Zhang has previously exhibited at Ouchi Gallery, Steuben Gallery, A.I.R GALLERY, New York, Black box Gallery, New York and The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York.