Exhibition at the Barn
John Kent
8.5x8.5 P.B.
56pgs.
$35.00
1-60052-016-2

Something similar must have gone through John Kent’s mind, when he observed his friends and models dive into the ocean waters of Baja, Corsica or California. Like Stieglitz in his Equivalents, Kent has managed to capture an essence of nature through subtle abstraction. Just as clouds take on a new sense of mystery when photographed entirely without the presence of a horizon, human bodies take on that mystery by freeing them of gravity, by picturing them float weightlessly in liquid space. Kent’s photographs allow us to see beauty in an alien yet strangely familiar world, liberated, sensuous, distant and fading.

I envision how John Kent - precariously drifting close to the ocean floor - may well have smiled about Stieglitz’s vain words to fellow artist Paul Strand upon having finished the cloud series, “I have really gotten the breathing of moments down.”

- Dieter Tremp, Curator – Bolinas Museum, California