Cuban-born artist Jorgé G. Hernandez has been a film photographer all of his adult life. His primary focus for the past 40 years of image-making has been the New York City skyline and wilderness landscapes – those as nearby as in the Hudson Valley and as far-flung as in the American Southwest. For his first solo exhibition at Albert Shahinian Fine Art – entitled “Jorgé G. Hernandez: VISIONS” – the gallery presents a selection of large-format museum-mounted archival prints (Cibachrome, Ilfochrome and Fuji Flex) culled from the artist’s extensive urban and wilderness archive.

Hernandez sees his role of photographer as one who seeks and communicates new insights when capturing a moment in time. It is through rigor, intentionality, creative insight, and expertise that his images work their magic. Each has been researched in advance: a site explored, equipment perfected, time light and weather considered, and the image he wants to take already imagined in his mind. In this sense, he views his process as visionary – all to capture something below the surface, to communicate a timeless universality, to reset a viewers understanding of “what he thought he already knew”.

His formal approach to his craft may seem cut and dry. Yet, so much of his patient planning is open to – and in many cases dependent on – the caprices occurring at the moment a shutter is clicked. The art in his craft is in the details, in his deep understanding of light, film, and composition, and how his expression of craft is constantly aware of unrealized possibilities – all components that differentiate and qualify a photographer’s style. Of the elements that make up his approach, light is the most essential (and difficult to master). “Light reveals the unfamiliar and alters the familiar,” notes Hernandez. For him, light is not only required to take a photographic image, its handling defines meaning and subject in his work. Nearly as important to him is his refusal to employ software or digital manipulation in his photography – to pursue his art through “old fashioned” film. Melding film with highest-quality optics – including panoramic lenses and cameras – and presenting work in museum mounts results in images that glow and radiate with life.

Not a surprise, Jorgé’s work is widely collected in private and corporate collections. Edition sizes are usually 10 prints per unique image (no matter the size) and photographs are available in limited sizes until an edition sells out. Prints can be purchased unframed (as available) or custom framed through the gallery. Albert Shahinian Fine Art is proud to represent Mr. Hernandez in its stable of exceptional mid- and late-career artists.

Concurrent with the main show is the annual “Spring/Summer Salon” featuring diverse works in the holdings gallery by our gallery artists.