Augen is pleased to present its second solo exhibition of photographs by Terry K. Thompson with this broad 50-year retrospective of his life’s work, titled “Entanglement – Photographic Works 1967-2017.” Thompson began early on as a painter and “literature sponge,” as he puts it, before settling on the camera and the particular aesthetics of photography as his medium of choice. He began his formal photo training in the Navy in 1968 under Edward Steichen’s extensive program, and continued on at the New York at the School of Visual Arts in the 1970s, where his teachers included Diane Arbus, Duane Michaels, Lisette Model, Gary Winogrand, and Arbus’s assistant, Tad Yamashiro among others. Thompson credits Yamashiro’s take on image formation and Winogrand’s “outside the frame” usage as being very influential in his own work.

Following New York, Thompson’s graduate school experience at the San Francisco Art Institute introduced him to the insight and perspective of many other established artists, including Linda Conner, Ruth Bernhard, Pirkle Jones, Imogen Cunningham, and Wynn Bullock. Throughout his own work, Thompson exhibits a range of inspiration and of exploration in what he describes as non-verbal poetic form. He cites the example of Entanglement in the Garden as his association with nature, with Eden, and artistic representations of the past all intersecting in something of a revisionist work. The non-verbal poetics of Thompson’s imagery is underscored by the seductive physical qualities of varied photographic mediums that he skillfully employs. The exhibition will include vintage gelatin silver prints, unique platinum and gum bichromate combination prints, and vintage platinotypes, with 99% platinum and a “smidge” of gold or iridium.

Thompson was awarded a Career Opportunity Grant from both the Oregon Arts Commission and the Ford Family Foundation in support of this retrospective exhibition. After studies at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Thompson completed his M.F.A. at the San Francisco Art Institute. He has had numerous solo exhibitions of his work in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Portland, and has been included in group exhibitions in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, and abroad in England, Scotland, Japan and Switzerland.
Thompson will be present at the gallery’s First Wednesday Preview and First Thursday openings and he will give an artist talk on Saturday, December 9, at noon. An exhibition catalog will be available for purchase at the gallery.