Photography – 17.01.1994 – 12.02.1994
ATHENSCOPE
28 January 1994
Marιa Dara at Medusa Art Gallery
The exhibition is a collection of an art photography. These black and white studies feature famous and non famous people, animals and scenery. Most are o combination of subjects superimposed on each other. The common factor is movement. Some are a maelstrom, while others have slow moving liquidity enhancing the beauty of the subject. Each has a depth and wonderful use of light that lends even the most simple construction a wealth of interest.
Mara Dara explained her technique saying, “First I take a photo from my TV set, making sure it is not a clear one. Then I miss two or three negatives together, the with the aid of sketches, I play around with them until I achieve what I want” .When asked how long it takes to finish each work she replies, I always try to create something different from the last. It could take two days or maybe a week until I am happy with the result.
Miss Dara has been a photographic artist for twenty years. This is her second exhibition and it is attracting a lot of interest. One wall is a bank of famous movie including a young Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Woody Allen. These have been photographed with a new approach, the Dara way. They are still recognisable but the result is novel and pleasing and far remove from a plain, ordinary “mug” shot.
Miss Dara commented “I see my work as experimentation and I set out to create movement”. There is thought in every piece a portion that remains fixed. “This was not a conscious thing that I did, “Maria Dara said, “Rather something that I became conscious of after many years”. She went on to explain, “I now realize that the static subjects are the people of things that I love or that I am going to love, the outer subjects are simply tools in my statical experiment, just passing through. That is life.