Arcane photographs coming to Digital Media Gallery

A solo exhibition, “There and Back” by Andrew Stanbridge, will open March 31 in the Digital Media Gallery at the Mass Communications Building on Franklin Street across from Skeath Hall.

Stanbridge will lecture about his work from 2 to 3 p.m. March 30 in the Fine Art Lecture Hall. An opening reception will be held from 4 to 5:30 p.m. in the Communications Building.

For his exhibition at Lycoming College, Stanbridge will be showing arcane digital prints of bombs, shamans, temple paintings, army dudes and brothels among other things. His prints are with a patina of other imagery to further the original oddities exposed to the camera. There will be a two-channel psychedelic bomb explosion video sequence displayed among the two-dimensional work.

Stanbridge has been overseas making “fotographs” of beaten and unbeaten streets, dirt roads and superhighways in Asia for the past 12 years.

Over this time, his work has addressed many issues including westernization, post-conflict rehabilitation, little known conflicts, the sex industry, unexploded ordnance, religious oddities and environmental tragedies.

This work has been published and exhibited internationally in a straight photojournalist form. When he is not in the back of pickup trucks on mining roads, gunning motor scooters through Bangkok markets or hoping for old Russian planes not to disintegrate mid-air, Stanbridge likes to redress his more arcane imagery with various inks, stickers and other variables he collects along the way. This often happens late at night with old friends (collaborators). In a way, he hopes that a weird “fotograph” can go beyond the weird. In another way, he believes he’s probably just dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Stanbridge received his master’s degree from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University in Boston.

In 2002, he was awarded the Fulbright Research Fellowship to continue his photographic work in Thailand. He has been the recipient of numerous grants, most notably, the Stevenson College Grant and the Elena Baskin Grant.

His work has been published by Aperture, Pinhole Journal, Chiang Mai Citylife,
and The International Herald Tribune. He has exhibited his work both nationally and internationally.

It is Stanbridge's first exhibition at the Digital Media Gallery.