Gallery to feature Justin Kimball’s “Pieces of String”

The Dorrance H. Hamilton Gallery has announced the opening of Justin Kimball’s “Pieces of String,” which features a series of color photographs exploring the minutiae of everyday life – a contemplation of our brief and humble legacies before they are cleaned up and cast to the wind.

The exhibit will be on display in the gallery Nov. 13 to Dec. 14.

The campus community and the general public are invited to attend an opening reception and artist talk on Thursday, Nov. 13. The reception will run from 5-8 p.m. in the gallery, while the artist talk will begin at 6 p.m. in the DiStefano Lecture Hall.

For four years, Kimball photographed in abandoned homes, hotels and buildings in the northeastern United States. For much of this work he accompanied his brother Doug, an auctioneer, into the houses of the deceased or dispersed. While Doug cleared these spaces of items for potential resale, Justin sought within them the evidence of an individual’s life. Photographing the smallest objects (a note, a box of hair pins, a stain on a pillow), he re-imagines their existence and relationship to the absent owners.

“I use the camera’s descriptive power and the photographic illusion of truth to create the narrative and inspire feelings about its subject,” Kimball says. “The resulting photographs are my perception of what happened in those spaces: Who lived there? What was hidden and what was seen?”

Kimball is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography, the Aaron Siskind Individual Photographers Fellowship and a grant from the John Anson Kittredge Educational Fund at Harvard University. His photographs have appeared in DoubleTake, Harpers, pdn (Photo District News), Photo Metro and Picture magazines, and his work can be found in the Corcoran Museum of Art, George Eastman House, J. Paul Getty Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Portland (Oregon) Museum of Art and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The gallery is handicap accessible with parking along Lawrence and Leroy avenues. Its exhibits are open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays and noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The gallery is closed on Mondays.