STATE OF MIND
A California Invitational
February 6 - June 6, 2010

State of Mind: A California Invitational is a celebration of California photography in the 21st century.

Twenty-two California photographers will be exhibited including Mona Kuhn, Todd Hido, Michael Light, Susan Rankaitis, Ken Gonzales-Day and Uta Barth. Their subject matter varies from scientific inquiry into the mechanics of light on the retina, to re-interpreting historical documents, to views of California’s beautiful and troubled topography, using techniques ranging from wet-collodion to film-based and digital imagery, or combinations of each.

In creating the Invitational, MoPA invited forty California-based curators, writers, gallery owners, and publishers to nominate photographers of note. MoPA juried the exhibition from this collective. While regional by way of where these photographers live, the issues within the photographs from State of Mind are global. They address what photographers from Berlin to Beijing are currently thinking about, among them: how photography continually re-invents itself, and how well it can describe the imaginary or reveal the invisible.

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Artist accommodations generously provided by The Sofia Hotel. Visiting San Diego for the exhibition? The Sofia Hotel offers special rates for members and friends of MoPA. Visit www.thesofiahotel.com and use promotional code 27101.

Support for the Members Opening Reception provided by Alchemy Restaurant, Karl Strauss, and Big Hammer Wines.

Related lectures sponsored by the members of MoPA’s Photo Forum. Institutional support for MoPA is provided, in part, by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Funds.

Seeing Beauty
January 30, 2010 - January 23, 2011

Seeing Beauty explores the aesthetics of beauty, expressed through the eyes of various photographers throughout the history of the medium, including Bill Brandt, Walker Evans, Mary Ellen Mark, Edward Weston, Minor White, and Aaron Siskind. The exhibition presents a range of genres in photography, such as portraiture, abstraction, landscape, and still life.

The photographs in the exhibition examine the elements of art and design, composition and framing, as well as subject matter. In examining these elements in the context of aesthetic beauty, the exhibition poses the question of how our personal interpretation and notions of what constitutes beauty affect our experience of looking at art. The exhibition is meant to engage viewers to challenge, redefine, or confirm their understanding of what beauty is, and what factors contribute to their aesthetic evaluation.

Seeing Beauty is the fifth in a series of educational exhibitions comprised of works from MoPA's permanent collection, presented in a thought-provoking, interactive and experiential setting.

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In Light
Selections from the Permanent Collection
January 30, 2010 - January 23, 2011

Explore MoPA’s treasures from the permanent collection exhibition In Light. Our rich holdings of photographic works tell vivid stories of photography’s master practitioners and technological innovations, while demonstrating photography’s ability to reveal the unseen and the unseeable. This special selection of photographs includes iconic names, such as Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange, and introduces viewers to the compelling works by other leaders of the medium.