Silverlens proudly presents Dwelling, a series of images by Frank Callaghan. As in his process and concept, Callaghan captures the ambient aura and light of the city. He takes to the backstreets and saturates dwelling places, monuments of cement and metal, in washes of light and color from their immediate surroundings.

He seizes rare glimpses of stillness, steeped in an acute awareness of the present. “I found myself drawn to the quiet, empty spaces of urban fringes at night and to the unintentional beauty of dwellings that seem to have grown organically out of the sincere need for shelter and the limits of material and space.” says Callaghan. His forthright perception eliminates the noise of judgment and elucidating the scenery with evidence of stories and leaves viewer to speculate. And as a product of his candid process and perception, he reveals the indwelling life and beauty that are most often overlooked.

Dwelling by Frankie Callaghan opens at 6 pm on September 9, 2009, Wednesday, and runs until the 3rd of October 2009 at Silverlens Gallery. As a related gallery event, Frank Callaghan will be hosting Sound Reaction a music and sound event where musicians and DJs interact with the photographs from the show. The even will take place on October 1, 2009, Thursday from 6-9pm at Silverlens Gallery.

The shape of this show started out in two ways. The first was a sort of subtraction of the urban element from the earlier work I have done. This element had tended to introduce layers of complexity into the pictures.

Implications connected to squatter areas and social issues. Although I enjoyed trying to balance the tensions in my earlier series, I wanted to see what happened when I simplified things - so when I first recognized this drift in what I was doing - I ran with it and decided subtract the urban from the equation.

The other building block in the beginning was composition. I was playing with positioning the horizon within the frame - like Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Seascapes - but with the moon and a lower horizon. But as I began replicating the formula, I started to drift and the rules began the bend, and I found myself instead stretching the limits of what I could change - while keeping the series in balance.

The title of the show reflects these two starting points. I use the word baseline to refer to both the compositional element of the horizon and the desire to simplify the process -> returning to a baseline - recalibration.

So thats the starting point. The rest is better kept unspoken.

- Frank Callaghan
Dwelling
August 2009

Born in England, Frank Callaghan’s love for photography began while just a boy growing up in Baguio. It wasn’t until after studying finance and management at the Wharton School of Business that he gave into his calling to work as a full-time photographer. He first exhibited his work at the age of 21 in Philadelphia.