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Health & Fitness

Mill Valley Photographer Barry Toranto shows reflection series at Fall Arts Festival

Mill Valley resident and co-owner of W.I.G.T. Printing, Barry Toranto, will be exhibiting his creative photographic works of reflections at the 57th annual Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival on September 21 and 22. 

Barry started his series of single exposure images he captures in window reflections while on a trip to Venice in 1995, "I took a picture through a store window that blended what was inside with what was outside. It was simply a reflection, but there was something that particularly stirred me about this image. In the window were fairly small statures of Michelangelo’s David, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, and some others.  Lined up in the window, they took on a life of their own, they seemed to belong together. Because of the window, they merged with images of the surrounding Venetian architecture, which grounded them a larger environment."

The results stimulated a treasure hunt of windows all over the world starting in New York the following year.  Barry was hooked and the series grew and continues today.  A travel log, the series moves through Europe: Amsterdam, Paris, Florence, Rome, Madrid, Barcelona, London, Munich. Back in the USA,  through LA, Chicago, San Francisco and back to New York. The perspective is through glass: always exciting, always surprising. What is inside merges, blends and layers with what is outside. Stories of places and environments come across in a new and different light.

Viewers are surprised that these pictures are single exposures. They are often referred to as painterly.  "People say they continue to find new information embedded in the layers. I find this to be true for me, too. It's part of the fun: finding new discoveries in the photograph that I have not seen before. The photographs take on an organic, living quality. The more I look, the more I see. They make me want to keep looking, to see how light, shadows, reflections, and glass may blend in infinite ways."

Visit Barry at booth 127 at the Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival September 21 and 22 in Old Mill Park and go by W.I.G.T at 234 Miller Ave. before then to see some of his reflections in his own store front window.  You might find something interesting to reflect on!




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