bonjourLA

On September 6, 2008 French photographer Olivier Pojzman will debut 15-foot fine art photos of Southern California’s landmark beaches at James Coleman Gallery, on the bluff of Santa Monica.

After shooting the likes of Paris Hilton and Hilary Duff for InStyle and Paris-Match magazines for a living, celebrity photographer Olivier Pojzman’s massive 15-foot on canvas fine art shots of Venice Beach, Hermosa Beach, Santa Monica and Malibu beachscapes, will debut on the bluffs of Santa Monica’s swanky Ocean Avenue neighborhood in the “Horizons” exhibition. 
Unlike traditional landscape imagery, his innovative technique uses forced perspective to stretch the 180 degree capacity of the human field of sight to a minimum of 250 degrees.  The photos translate the immensity of the American landscape into 2 dimensions and add a painterly feel with the canvas medium.

The exhibition is slated for September 6 – 25, 2008 and an opening celebration will be held at the gallery on Saturday, September 6 from 7 - 10 p.m. The exhibition is presented by luxury real estate magazine SPACE magazine and proceeds from the sales of the works benefit local non-profit Heal the Bay.

Pojzman’s photographs feature lovely little surprises of abandoned bicycles, unique cloud formations, birds caught in flight, surfer’s gliding in joy and a sparkling ferris wheel, but lie in a painterly context of a theatrically striking panorama. His photos document the powerful beauty of nature today as a “visual alert” before it changes with the environmental and global warming issues that will soon change the face of the earth. He is inspired by the light of California and the spirit of creativity that attracted the entertainment industry here in the 1920’s. His work causes the onlooker to pause, meditate, look deeply into the details and then stand back as if appreciating a painting.

“Though Pojzman’s settings are familiar, it’s the forced perspective that is wider than our natural field of sight, their immense size and his use of canvas that really make them strikingly unusual,” said James Coleman Gallery director, Tony Kettering.  “The photos have an incredible painterly feel and his reputation for celebrity shots in every major international magazine makes his fine art vision all the more interesting.”

“I’ve never gotten over the immensity of this country,” says the Parisian born Pojzman. “I use my still cameras like a film (movie) camera, shooting from left to right in about 15 to 20 pieces and stitching it together. I then print the images on canvas, so the art becomes a fusion of a painting and a photograph.”

Celebrity photographer, Olivier Pojzman, launched IrisWork (www.iriswork.com) in February 2005 to produce fine art photographic imagery. His first IrisWork was created out of need to decorate a long wall in his new home and documented the beachscape of Playa Del Rey and then went on to include all of Southern California’s famous beaches and other locales such as his native Paris, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Pennsylvania, New York, Mexico, England and Mauritania, west Africa.  His panoramic photography achieves a balance heretofore unseen in the world of fine art photography. The immense size of his panoramic projects is staggering and incredibly labor intensive. Olivier painstakingly stitches as many as 15-20 digital images together to create his panoramas.

His images range in size from 42 inches to 15 feet, calling to mind the works of his artistic heroes - David Hockney, William Turner, Edward Hopper and Ansel Adams. The final product is then printed onto a massive cotton canvas in a giclee style where its details can be studied on a minute and grand scale. The result is an exquisite photograph with the texture and balance of a painted masterpiece.

James Coleman Gallery
on Bluffs of Santa Monica
1431 Ocean Ave., Suite A
Santa Monica, CA 90401
310.393.7436