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Rome: 1969
September 1st, 2007 – January 15th, 2008
The photographs of John Pepper have a rare capacity to speak to us from silent moments, as though they were returning memories from our earlier lives. In part, the universal appeal of Italy's post-war films, art and literature make the men, women and children in Pepper's photographs close and familiar to us. One after another they appear, in their shadows and silences, emerging from a single, immense human tapestry. The child's face next to the woman eating spun sugar candy (The Children are Watching Us) has the wide-eyed wonder and innocence of Giulietta Messina in Fellini's La Strada or Nights of Cabiria. The old woman holding the ladder (Rossi's Christ Stopped at Eboli) seems to wait for us to return to a lost home or childhood–captured in Obsession, the photograph of boys running in the dark.
We have known these people in passing, yet now they have returned in these black and white photographs. They wait for us to look once more, and for the first time. deep within their shadows and silences, with hidden meanings in our attempts to order and understand our lives.
Born in Rome of American parents, John Pepper was educated in the United States and lives in Paris and New York. He was trained as a photographer by Ugo Mulas and his father, Curtis Bill Pepper. But it was at his parents' dinner table that he learned the most, listening to such photographers as Cartier-Bresson, Sam Shaw, John Ross, and David Seymore (Chim) as they made their way through the family home in the 1960s and 70s. In Pepper's work as a photographer, filmmaker, painter and theater director, the recurring
theme is people, and their nature.
The photographs in this exhibition are modern prints, as no vintage prints ever existed. The sizes range from 16x20 to 30x40 inch gelatin silver prints and are in editions of 3 (in each size).
Please visit the website www.mariannecourville.com or contact the gallery at 518-828-6411.
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