Madoo Conservancy: Photo Exhibit — Michael Light, “Two of ‘Em”, 8.2nd to 8.7th

 

(Sagaponack, NY)—The Madoo Conservancy is pleased to present Two of ‘Em, an installation by Michael Light on view in the summer studio from August 2 through September 7. Madoo is open to the public Wednesday through Saturday from 12 – 4pm and by appointment. Please register at madoo.org/visit.

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The first time I met Bob Dash I was a budding photographic aesthete of fifteen, brought to Madoo for drinks and dinner… The evening remains indelibly burned into my mind forty-five years later… Looking at some of my pictures, he diplomatically declared that I had a “good eye,” which I did not forget.

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Returning to Sagaponack in 2013, months before Dash’s death, Light reminded Bob of this comment, and he snorted back “not only one, but ya got TWO of ‘em!”

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Photo: Bob’s House, Madoo, Sagaponack, NY, 2023. Pigment print on Hahnemuhle rag, 50″ x 40″

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Raised in Amagansett at what would eventually become Quail Hill Farm, Light returned as a part-time resident to the East End following the pandemic. A homecoming of sorts for Light, Two of ‘Em is an immersive installation comprised of three large photo books displayed in conversation with each other, one depicting summer nudes of a close friend as a kind of garden statuary, another the vulnerable beech forests of Stony Hill and the decimated pitch pines of Napeague, and the third, images of the gardens at Madoo. Larger prints emanate from these books, interspersed in a wall installation, mingling poetically, inviting new associations and interpretations. In a departure from the aerial photographs of vast Western American landscapes for which he is known, these images, shot at close range and with a limited depth of field, are Light’s first made on the ground in decades. In painterly psychic conversation with Dash and Madoo, they touch upon local and universal concepts of time, aging, desire, and garden Edens – as well as the larger imperiled landscapes beyond their walls.

Michael Light is a San Francisco-based photographer focused on the environment and how contemporary American culture relates to it. His works are held in institutional collections worldwide and have been exhibited, amongst other venues, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Getty Museum, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, MOMA New York, the Fondation Cartier, Paris, the Hayward Gallery, London and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

For over two decades, Light has aerially photographed the American landscape, pursuing themes of mapping, vertigo, human impact on the land, and various aspects of geologic time and the sublime. A private pilot and Guggenheim Fellow in photography, he is currently working on an extended aerial survey of the arid Western states. Radius Books published the first of a multi-volume series of this work, Bingham Mine/Garfield Stack, in 2009. The second, LA Day/LA Night, was released in 2011. The third, Lake Las Vegas/Black Mountain, was published in 2015. The fourth, Lake Lahontan/Lake Bonneville, was released in September 2019. Light is also known for his globally published archival works. His first, FULL MOON (1999), used lunar geological survey imagery made by the Apollo astronauts to show the moon both as a sublime desert and an embattled point of first human contact. 100 SUNS (2003), focused on the politics and landscape meanings of military photographs of U.S. atmospheric nuclear detonations from 1945 to 1962.

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The MADOO Conservancy is dedicated to the study, preservation, and enhancement of MADOO, the ever changing, horticulturally diverse garden with historic structures established in 1967 by artist, gardener, and writer Robert Dash in the village of Sagaponack, New York. At Madoo, a unique living tribute to the artistic imagination of its founder, we seek to continually engage, educate, and inspire our visitors within this entirely organic environment. The Madoo Conservancy is a nonprofit 501(c)3 public charity. 

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