Annette Fournet and Frank Francis Exhibit at Viewpoint in August/September

Two bodies of work with an international focus will be on display at Viewpoint from August 19 to September 24. The exhibit will include a Second Saturday reception on September 10 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Frank Francis, a Viewpoint member living in Nevada City, has been driven by a passion for photography for many years, and since his retirement in 1996 has devoted the greater part of his time to that passion. His search for images has taken him repeatedly to remote corners of the world, including Africa, India, Bhutan, and Mongolia. His Lightjet color prints originate from 35 mm slides, digitally enlarged but not digitally edited.

An American living in New Orleans and Prague, Annette Fournet has exhibited for over 20 years in both the U.S. and Europe, and had work published in B&W and The Photo Review. She is Director of Photographic Studies for the Prague Summer Program, Western Michigan University, and Charles University, Prague.

The work in this exhibit, done mostly in the Czech Republic and other Middle European nations after the Velvet Revolution, Fournet calls Lítost / Wabi-Sabi. Milan Kundera says that the Czech word lítost has no translation in other languages, but refers to “a feeling as infinite as an open accordion, a feeling that is the synthesis of many others: grief, sympathy, remorse, and an indefinable longing.” A Japanese aesthetic derived in part from elements of Zen and Taoism, wabi-sabi is defined by Leonard Koren as “a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.” Fournet’s black-and-white images, made with a plastic Diana camera, explore the complex feelings evoked by “the value or beauty of the inconspicuous and overlooked detail” in a world characterized by imperfection and impermanence.