River North Gallery Uses Exceptional Art to Offer Pleasure and Move the Mind

Viewed as haunts of the elite, art galleries aren’t the kinds of places you’d associate with advocacy and activism.  But Hope: A Prelude, an exhibition featuring the work of conservation photographer Cristina Mittermeier at Hilton Contemporary’s River North gallery, shows how extraordinary beauty and environmental consciousness can merge to outstanding effect. 

Like most galleries, Hilton Contemporary focuses on specific art mediums.  And although they feature art in other forms, their chief concentration centers on photography and film. Through them, the gallery “seeks to bring awareness to the contemporary issues of our times.”  During their years at their River North and Bridgeport locations, they’re found a varied and consistent clientele who align with that goal.

In Hope: A Prelude, the link between art and awareness initially seems subtle because Mittermeier’s images are so captivating.  She introduces worlds far removed from the one of concrete, asphalt and rote routine that define so many of our existences.  Often large or very large in scale, the images she captures are commanding and inescapably enthralling.  Ranging from 20” x 30” to slightly more than 4’ x 6’, their size acts as doorways into landscapes, life forms and cultures completely removed from our everyday consciousness.   And like any highly trained and gifted artist, Mittermeier’s perspective of her subjects tells stories within stories about the places, people and animals her camera immortalize. 

The range of sensations her photographs trigger is as varied as the types of images she takes.  In Azul, a portrait of a single shark photographed at a distance and completely alone, you’re offered a glimpse of the ocean that reignites its sense of inscrutable mystery.  Swimming in total isolation, the shark looks like a creature fully cognizant of and imminently at one with its environment.   Dim light, deep blue color and a pervading solemnity paint a picture of an ancient and remarkable continuum.  In Azul, it’s one where the waves of the ocean’s surface form an ominous sky.

Explaining that whim and humor are characteristics she also appreciates in an image, the photographer’s Lady with the Goose II taken of a Tibetan woman in China can claim both attributes while still radiating remarkable power.  The sternness of the woman’s profile, the awkwardness of the pet goose resting on her head and the vitality of the color red entrance the eye and fill the mind with curiosity.  Taken in 2008, you’re left mildly incredulous that such a presence could occupy the current millennium.  More importantly, the photograph reminds us of the world’s vast cultural variety and how much more rich it is because of that multiplicity. 

Traveling to some of the world’s most remote locations, Mittermeier and her camera document the splendor of the world’s ecological and cultural diversity.  But her pathway to becoming one of the world’s most recognized and respected conservation photographers was anything but direct.  Growing up in land locked Cuernavaca, Mexico; and innately drawn to the ocean, it didn’t take her long to understand the critical need to preserve and protect it.  Her love of the ocean initially led her to obtain a degree in Biochemical Engineering in Marine Sciences.  But it was as a frustrated and unfulfilled housewife that she discovered her passion for photography. A passion she honed by later attending the Fine Art Photography program at the Corcoran College of the Arts in Washington, D.C.  She now sees her work as “building an awareness of the responsibility of what it means to be human” and an “urgent reminder that we are all linked to all other species on the planet”. 

Her images have filled the pages of National Geographic, TIME, O and McLeans.  Shot with empathy as well as skill, they exude a deep understanding and an appreciation of what her lens sees. 

The exhibition at Hilton Contemporary alternates between images depicting wildlife and landscapes and those celebrating indigenous people in their habitats.  Astrapia is one of several that are particularly transfixing because of the human gaze Mittermeier captures and the way it chronicles the use of body ornamentation.  Taken from the name of a genus of birds of paradise, Astrapia is a close up of a woman’s face in the Mount Hagen region of Papua New Guinea during an annual festival.  A bright blue iridescent feather sweeps across her forehead.  A red headpiece frames her face on the right while red, yellow and white pigment surround deep and knowing eyes.  Eyes that create immediate and direct connection.  It’s the language of the eyes that lets us look beyond cultural disparities and register the magnitude of our similarities. 

In the quietly imposing Alley of Giants, Madagascar’s massive baobab trees take center stage.  Some reaching up to 100’ tall, they seem to brush the sky and the size of their photograph in the gallery makes you feel as if you can walk through the glass and stand among them.  Caught in fading light, they look like sentinels at the threshold of paradise.  

Through her photography, Mittermeier places life and environments we’ve lost contact with right before our eyes.  Because they’re so startling, so unexpected and so beautiful, they look like jewels; precious realities that are invaluable simply because they exist.  Patrons of the gallery can take these images home as emblems and reminders of nature’s opulence.  Their awareness triggering message will undoubtedly resonate with visitors to those homes, too. 

Hope: A Prelude ends soon.  It will be replaced on September 6th by the work of her colleague and partner, Paul Nicklen, also a world-renowned conservation photographer.  Nicklen along with Mittermeier co-founded SeaLegacy, a non-profit organization that promotes conservation through visual storytelling and photography.  Born in Saskatchewan, Canada and having spent many of his early years in Canada’s Arctic Circle, much of his work captures the watery blue realms of the North and the animals that inhabit it.  Like Mittermeier’s, it also ranges far and wide across the globe to record arresting and often magnificent images focused on nature’s excessive wonder.

For more information visit Hilton Contemporary online:  https://hiltoncontemporary.com