FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
THE LATE THEO WESTENBERGER'S HAND-PAINTED, VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHS
“FLAVORS IN 1975”
PRESENTED BY COLLEEN KEEGAN AND CREATIVE CAPITAL
September 14 – October 7, 2008
Opening Reception: Sunday, September 14, 6:30 – 9:30PM
Frank Pictures Gallery
Begamot Station A-5, 2525 Michigan Avenue Santa Monica, CA 90404
310 828-0211 / 323 839-6166 cell
E-mail, Laurie@FrankPicturesGallery.com
Web site, http://www.frankpicturesgallery.com
Gallery hours, Tuesday – Saturday, 11:30am-6:30pm
Theo Westenberger, “Flavors in 1975”, Unique Hand-Painted Silver Gelatin Print, 16" x 20".
This body of work, which captures an iconic party-colored, slightly skewed and awesomely beautiful view of Southern California of the seventies is a departure for Westenberger, who during her short creative life was an award-winning magazine photographer. Westenberger passed away this past February and was noted for her many magazine covers including Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, Life, Entertainment Weekly, and National Geographic Traveler where she was a contributing editor for several years. She was selected by the Academy of Motion Pictures Art and Sciences to take a group photo of all the women who have ever received an Academy Award. The U.S. Postal Service chose two of her photographs of Native American dancers to reproduce on stamps. Westenberger attended Dartmouth and earned her MFA at Pratt Institute. She also taught workshops in lighting and portraiture. In a time when female commercial photographers were virtually non-existent, Theo had shot three presidents and an award-winning array of covers of actors like Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep, and Jennifer Aniston for the best magazines in the world. Flavors in 1975 marks her debut as a fine art photographer.
Westenberger grew up in a Richard Neutra house in La Canada-Flintridge and these are the photographs of a homegrown eye. They are exquisite perceptions of a specific moment and a particular place, so captivating of that time and that place that the fact that a look from our vantage point from the twenty first century backwards to the used car lots, miniature golf courses, detritus of the Rose Parade, Goodyear blimp, and Cinderella's castle doesn't render them clichés, is almost an impossibility. Each photograph holds a particular surprise, a pop and a power that blows them out of the ball park (even if it is Disneyland). There was no Photoshop in 1975, the happy incongruities had nothing to do with iPhoto or even luck, just everything to say about Theo Westenberger's gift and her sense of humor. Using Marshall's oil paints on black and white prints, she radically recreated her environment to realize her very own private left coast, a gorgeous place in living color that is to be her living legacy.
The opening reception is on Sunday, September 14th, from 6:30 to 9:30pm. The exhibition continues until October 7, 2008.
Theo Westenberger, “California Neutra Poolhouse II”, Unique Hand-Painted Silver Gelatin Print, 16" x 20".
