The Boston-based Exposure Project is a fine art photography collective founded in 2005 by four principal artists of diverse talent: Ben Alper, Anastasia Cazabon, Eric Watts and Adam Marcinek. The collective has just selfpublished its third book of contemporary photography featuring their latest work, as well as showcasing that of other members. The collective also curates and mounts gallery exhibitions while hosting a vibrant online forum fostering community interest in contemporary photography.
Ben Alper and Eric Watts’ photographs deal with realism in examining the American urban landscape. Alper concentrates on the visage of Main Street storefronts and residential yard scenes adorned with lawn ornaments. From a farther vantage point, Eric Watts shows compelling images such as a weed-sprouting, lonely stretch of asphalt leading to a sprinkling of buildings in a manufacturing neighborhood.
Adam Marcinek and Anastasia Cazabon’s artworks offer separate and distinct notions of truth and secrets surrounding precious, personal, early life memories. Drawn by time and nostalgia, Marcinek documents his family’s store and the interior of his home. In “Helen’s Bedroom,” a floral patterned bedspread covers a well-made bed pushed against a similarly patterned wall, dominated by a large crucifix overlooking the bed; a soothing light permeates the room. In “Lucille’s Room,” a close-up image
shows a potted plant resting on a simple bureau surrounded by small plastic and ceramic statues of the Virgin Mary. God and the Holy Trinity’s presence reign. The images illustrate that religion is the central foundation of countless American homes. In these telltale pictures of rustic reverence,
Marcinek said, are four composite elements of truth in his upbringing - quiet, lightness, simplicity and history. It is an interior monologue delivered with a straight forward, stream-of-consciousness.
Cazabon, like Marcinek, alternates between using a medium format Hasselblad and a larger 4x5 camera to retain clarity of details critical to her 16”x 20” (when mounted for gallery exhibition) prints. But the similarity of their art ends there.
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