The City of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs presents Untitled Places, an exhibition at City Gallery that assembles liminal landscapes by photographer Nigel Parry from March 1 through May 5, 2024. Parry, a renowned portrait photographer who has photographed US Presidents, celebrities, and other luminaries, will show more than forty of his impressionistic landscapes, photographed in the Lowcountry and upstate New York, almost exclusively on film. City Gallery will hold an opening reception on Friday, March 1 from 5-7pm, and an artist’s talk on Saturday, March 16 at 2pm. Both events are free and open to the public.

Over his 35-year career, Parry has been lauded for his portraits of artists, politicians, and celebrities for publications like Vogue, The New York Times Magazine, Time Magazine, among others. “I arrange the light, lines, composition, and color into an immediate impression of their being,” said Parry. When the pandemic left him without people to photograph, he returned to photographing the landscape, a hobby he enjoyed as a youth.

“My landscapes use all the same means of visual storytelling and intentions to show my highly personalized representation of the environment around me. These photographs are not necessarily meant to be a direct representation of the view I see, but more of a feeling of what it’s like to be there” adds Parry. The resulting landscapes of the Lowcountry and upstate New York offer abstract impressions of Parry’s surroundings. “Unwittingly referencing Rothko, I am drawn to separate the photograph into distinct slabs of color in which subtle details of the world around us are discovered: the wind through the marsh grass, the abrupt clash of sky and land, or the horizon where heaven and earth meld into one and details are barely perceived,” said Parry. The photos are almost exclusively from film cameras, and, adds Parry, “their inherent imperfections – lens aberrations, grain within the film’s various layers, chemical development, digitization, and printing processes – combine to transform the photographs into something more abstract and pointillistic, recognizable yet indistinct.”

Those interested in viewing the upcoming exhibition are invited to visit City Gallery from March 1 through May 5, 2024 on Wednesdays through Sundays between 12 and 5 p.m. Gallery admission is free, and walk-ins are welcome.