The Trenton Museum Society
Proudly Presents
Bruce Katsiff at Ellarslie
Bruce Katsiff: 50 Years – Looking Back & Forward
and
Face Maps: Explorations in Shape, Space and Soul
Photography and Sculpture
September 23 – November 12, 2017
Bruce Katsiff on Bruce Katsiff November 5, 2 pm
Admission – $12, Members – $10
at the door
Katsiff plans to talk about his love for photography and how its place as an artistic medium has changed in the last 50 years. The digital revolution increasingly presents the photograph less as an object and more as an experience. These changes are not good or bad — just part of the continuing evolution of the medium. Having lived through the transition from silver salts to pixels he has worked in both worlds.
The Trenton Museum Society is proud to present the work of nationally-known photographer Bruce Katsiff in two distinct exhibits at the Trenton City Museum.
In the Malloy Gallery Bruce Katsiff: 50 Years – Looking Back & Forward displays works covering the long, illustrious career of Katsiff, director emeritus of neighboring Michener Museum in Doylestown, PA. Throughout his teaching career, as well as during the twenty years as Director of the Michener, photography played an important role in his life. Over the years, Katsiff’s photographic interests have covered four major areas: three groups are “directorial” where gathering and arranging objects prior to taking the photograph create the subject and the fourth group is an example of using the camera as a “window to nature.”
The portfolio, Historic Taxidermy, being exhibited for the first time at the Trenton City Museum, was created subsequent to Katsiff’s stint as museum director and shows the artist returning to the studio, in this case to arrange and record decaying taxidermy that has been hidden in museum storage vaults and unseen for decades.
Bruce Katsiff is compelled to photograph subject matter that is challenging and uncomfortable. “My hope is that my photographs will offer the viewer images that are unique and impactful, even if they may at times be disturbing.”
Victory, Constance Bassett
In Face Maps: Explorations in Shape, Space and Soul, Katsiff’s photography shares the stage with five regional sculptors whose explorations in bronze, stone, terracotta and wood explore the question, “What’s in a face?” The exhibition attempts to open a small, intimate visual dialogue continuing the theme explored in the Katsiff retrospective of inward journey and relationships. The busts and figurative works of contemporary sculptors Contance Bassett, Harry Georgeson, Isabel Borgatta, Stacie Speer Scott and Nick Pan speak to each other and to the photographs of Bruce Katsiff in a way that deepens and enhances the visual conversation.
Born in Philadelphia where he attended Central High School, Bruce Katsiff went on to study photography at Rochester Institute of Technology and completed graduate work at Pratt Institute in New York City, earning BFA and MFA degrees. He attended postgraduate studies at Oxford University. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries including the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. For 25 years he taught photography and from 1989-2012, he served as Director and CEO of the James A. Michener Art Museum. Bruce lives in Philadelphia with his wife Jo.
Katsiff’s relationship with Trenton Museum Society trustee and exhibit curator, Joan Perkes, began in the late 60s when he joined the photography department of Bucks County Community College and Joan Perkes was just beginning her art career as an art dealer, gallery director and owner of her own gallery.
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