Against the Sea/Dark Mountains 

Scott Bolendz is a photographer of dark natural environments.  The moody coastlines and ominous mountains featured in his work express a deeply personal photographic vision – one of both beauty and disquiet.  This exhibition brings together two related bodies of his award-winning work: Against the Sea and Dark Mountains.

 Against the Sea is a series of elegiac, meditative studies of time-sculpted trees succumbing to the eternal surf.  Bolendz began this project toward the end of his father’s life, which was slowly being eroded by Parkinson’s Disease.  These images give photographic form to a search for solace, understanding and acceptance during a period of great personal loss.  Dark Mountains transports the viewer to the sublime reaches of remote, high-altitude environments.  This series brims with awe and anxiety.  Bolendz – a survivor of a rare childhood disease – engages with the specter of his own mortality in a series of cathartic, personally transformative, photographic journeys into the mountains.

 Memory, personal history and identity give shape to Bolendz’s work.  His photographs, like self-portraits, are reflections of the artist himself.