Rick Wester Fine Art is pleased to announce the inclusion of works by five of our gallery artists Chris Colville, Lilly McElroy, Eric Pickersgill, Donna Ruff, and Cassandra Zampini in the exhibition The Qualities of LIGHT: The Story of a Pioneering New York City Photography Gallery, which officially opened this Saturday, December 14th, in Tucson, AZ, at the Center for Creative Photography, and runs until Saturday, May 30th, 2020.

RWFA President and Owner, Rick Wester will be moderating a panel discussion and then participating in another at the CCP in a three-day symposium entitled Legacies of LIGHT, January 17th – 19th, 2020.

Conceived by CCP Chief Curator, Dr. Rebecca Senf, this current exhibition highlights the extraordinary legacy of LIGHT, the seminal contemporary photography gallery, which operated in NYC from 1971-1987. For quite a few years, LIGHT was the first and only gallery of its time to rely 100% on representing and selling the work of living photographers. The gallery featured an impressive stable of artists such as the likes of Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, Frederick Sommer, Emmet Gowin, Ray K. Metzker, Garry Winogrand, Frank Gohlke, Eikoh Hosoe, William Klein, Harold Jones and many others.

This exhibition celebrates LIGHT’s innovative commitment to artists, focus on education, cultivation of community, and huge market influence. These characteristics will be illustrated by photographic artworks, archival documentation, film and audio footage, installation views, period snapshots, and contemporary photography. An emphasis on educational programming has been placed within the exhibition, in order to better offer visitors an understanding of the critical period within the 1970’s and 1980’s in context of the seminal influence of LIGHT, framed within the context of the history of photography.

The exhibit features materials from the archives of LIGHT, in addition to contributed works selected by current art dealers, who are former LIGHT employees and now gallerists themselves. Rick Wester of RWFA was invited to contribute the selected contemporary photographic artworks from our gallery to the exhibit, along with other works contributed by the other former LIGHT employees who are now also art dealers including: Peter MacGill of Pace MacGill Gallery; Robert Mann of Robert Mann Gallery, and Laurence Miller of Laurence Miller Gallery.

LIGHT holds a special personal connection for Rick Wester as it was here that he rooted his spanning career as an art dealer in photography when working at LIGHT in the early 1980s. It was at LIGHT that he gained an in-depth knowledge of LIGHT’s notable artists, as well as the contemporary photography market.

Now several decades later, after having played a part in LIGHT’s archives being gifted to CCP by Fern Schad (the partner and wife of the late Tennyson Schad, who together founded LIGHT with Harold Jones in 1971), Rick Wester is thrilled to be able to announce our participation in this very special exhibition which highlights such a huge, expansive legacy.