At last night's Bakery salon, we were treated to a stunning presentation of Kirk Torregrossa's photography from a documentary project that he did while in Vietnam. Torregrossa travelled to Vietnam in early 2009 for 11 weeks to accompany the sculptor Keisha Luce, who is producing a project entitled "Sum and Parts." Casting "documentary sculpture" from real life, Luce worked with Vietnamese people born with deformities due to exposure to the dioxin in Agent Orange used during the Vietnam War. In Vietnam Torregrossa met and photographed many people living with the continuing effects of Agent Orange.
The photographs that Torregrossa presented were alternately beautiful, intense, lively and shocking. The evening began with Jenny, Jessica, and Tonee looking closely at Kirk's black and white contact sheets, to pick their faves. the evening proceeded with Kirk giving a slide show on the digital projector, and explaining the project and his approach, and it ended with a discussion about the project and the photography. Kirk is now in the process of editing and printing the photographs, and will produce a photographic component for an exhibition with Keisha Luce, which will be shown at Dartmouth College, and may be exhibited in Portland at the Salt Center for Documentary Studies, of which he is an alum.
Thanks Kirk for showing us this strong body of work.
Those in attendance were Jenny Gold, Jessica Williams, Tanja Hollander, Tonee Harbert, and two of Kirk's friends Noah and Laura.
To see more about the project, visit www.sumandparts.com or www.kirktorregrossa.com
This is a truly revealing site that uses photography as a vehicle of change and an expression of both the inner self and the exposure of what others will otherwise not see. through Kirk's recent visit to Sierra Leone and through the lens of his camera, my eyes were open wide with the depth of images of my country that I see everyday and sometimes many fail to see.
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