Miklos Gaál, Sunday Afternoon, 2003, C-print, 54.3 x 43.3 inches (138 x 110 cm), Copyright the artist and courtesy of Herrmann & Wagner (Berlin, Germany)

IMAGE CREDIT: Miklos Gaál, Sunday Afternoon, 2003, C-print, 54.3 x 43.3 inches (138 x 110 cm), Copyright the artist and courtesy of Herrmann & Wagner (Berlin, Germany)

Miklos Gaál
(Born 1974, Espoo, Finland; Lives and works in Helsinki, Finland)
Nominated by John Stomberg

Miklos Gaál is fascinated by the subjective nature of experience and sees photography as a distinctly conceptual medium. Known for his use of focus and depth of field, Gaál exploits "camera sight" for metaphorical aims.

With a background as a graphic designer, Gaál earned his MFA in photography from the University of Art and Design (Helsinki, Finland) in 2004. He has participated in artist residency programs in New York, Berlin, and São Paulo. Shown and collected in Europe, Gaál was recently selected for ReGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow, a survey of up-and-coming artists from around the world all chosen by curators at the world-renowned Musée de l'Elysée (Lausanne, Switzerland). Culled and juried from over 60 of the most imminent photography programs in the world, ReGeneration is a traveling exhibition by Aperture and is currently showing at the Art Institute of Boston (Boston, MA). He is represented by Herrmann & Wagner Gallery (Berlin, Germany).

Artist Statement

I am interested in creating alternative interpretations on perceptions to which we have become accustomed. The scenic images of events record both significant and absent-minded moments, and the overview is transformed in surprising ways. Distance and blurred resolution are means of distancing. The explicit and partial blurred focus guides the viewer's gaze, leading it through the pictorial plane along an unexpected route. The recognizable focused area is emphasized, creating a reinforced feeling of diversity and bringing up a random selection of details that otherwise would easily be disregarded. Familiar things have become transparent, but different kinds of ways of looking detach from conventional habits. By reinterpretating the everyday, fascination and significance can be found in existing forms.

John Stomberg

(Born 1959, Newton, MA; Lives in Williamstown, MA)

John Stomberg was on the PRC Board of Directors from 1999 to 2002 when he was the Director of the Boston University Art Gallery and taught in the BU Art History department. Stomberg received Ph.D. from BU in 1999, specializing in the history of photography and American painting.

Stomberg has published work in the Winterthur Portfolio, Art New England, and was the editor of A Changing World: New England in the Photographs of Verner Reed, 1950-1972 (2004). His numerous publications include work on From Icon to Irony: German and American Industrial Photography (1996), Power and Paper Margaret Bourke-White: Modernity & the Documentary Mode (1998), and the forthcoming from the University Of Chicago Press, "A Genealogy of Orthodox Documentary," in Mark Reinhardt, Holly Edwards, and Erina Duganne, eds., Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain (2006). Stomberg is currently the Deputy Director and Senior Curator for Exhibitions and Lecturer in Art at the Williams College Museum of Art (Williamstown, MA). His recent and upcoming exhibitions include Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain (2006) and In the National Character (2007).

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Artist Statement

John Stomberg