Things to do tonight . . . heroin, childhood & a palace

Things have slowed down a little but hey its Thursday after all so here's tonight pick of the litter:


Jeff Olson: North Woods II

Opening reception

6.00 - 8.00 pm

Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art

511 West 25th Street, bet 10th & 11th ave

North Woods II is a series of large-scale photographs taken over the course of two years. Begun in the fall of 2005, the work explores life in an isolated area of New Hampshire that is representative of rural, small town America. Olson follows a select cast of young people, capturing moments of minor significance. Through his use of color and light, Olson infuses these images with a sense of emotional content that is more perceived than understood.

Olson's nostalgia and distinct connection to his past and its relationship to the multiple rural areas he was raised in are a constant presence in these pictures. He spent the substantial periods of his childhood documenting his consistently changing lifestyle as he moved around rural areas across the country. Working first with a camera he found when he was 8 years old (only to have it sold a year later), he received another camera four years later as a gift. These two cameras, one lost and the other a reclamation of the potential its predecessor suggested, enabled Olson to document what he saw on his journeys. His images reflect the solitude of his childhood experiences, as processed through a more mature eye. Courtesy Peter Ray Halpert Gallery

Robert Polidori: Versailles

Opening Reception

6.00 - 8.00pm

Edwynn Houk Gallery

745 Fifth Ave at 45th Street



Jessica Dimmock: The Ninth Floor

Opening Reception

6.00 - 8.00pm

Foley Gallery

547 West 27th Street, 5th Floor

Jessica Dimmock began photographing her series "The Ninth Floor" after being approached by a New York City drug dealer several years ago. She was in the midst of completing her degree at the International Center of Photography for Documentary Photography and Photojournalism. She became interested in photographing the dealer and his daily deliveries. One such stop was the ninth-floor of an elegant apartment building in New York's Flatiron district. For the next two and a half years Dimmock settled in as a long-term observer to candidly record the consumptive and consumed lives of nearly thirty heroin addicts in heir eroding, claustrophobic home.

"...the mood inside was muffled, slow, secretive and sick, becalmed by a septic hush," Dimmock recalls, and though her vivid portrait of that decaying place, with no light and duct-taped walls indeed silences its voyeur, it is her relentless documentation of the human lives struggling through and surviving addiction that impact upon us so profoundly.

Caught between the unaffected, objective nature of journalism and the heart-felt feelings for her subjects, Dimmock reflects how, "...the strange contradictions of this work are such that a mutual trust is built...but that very trust eventually undermines the arms-length neutrality of the documentarian."

A selection of more than forty chromogenic prints from Dimmock's series will be exhibited. The photographs lay bare the privacy and unmentionables of this three-bedroom apartment; its afflicted tenants silhouetting through smoke-clouds, wading in piles of waste, lampshades, bottles, cardboard boxes, and needles. Courtesy Foley Gallery