Lucky Shots at CBPL, June 13

Coos Bay Public Library hosts ‘Lucky Shots’, an exhibit of photographs by Joan Emm, during the month of June 2016. After a year of full-time apprenticeship to the California portrait photographer David Peters, Joan finally knew that she had made a photo worthy of presenting to him for critique. He looked for a long moment and finally pronounced “lucky shot” with no expression whatsoever. A minute later he started laughing, and Joan was able to relax. A week later he hired her to photograph his clients and they eventually taught workshops for professional photographers in California and Italy. The photographs exhibited here were all made with film. They were made because Joan imagined a story and wanted to tell it. Several are personal myths about longing and loss. Three of these images were commissioned portraits. Joan has a soft-focus view of the world and hopes to convey more about the feeling than the literal reality. The black and white photos of Paris were found while she was moving last month and brought back memories of printing them in her dark room. The colorful images in the middle section are all Polaroid’s made with SX-70 film that was discontinued years ago. This particular Polaroid stayed malleable for about 15 minutes so she could manipulate the images with a bobby pin or a toothpick to make a more impressionistic image. This had to happen immediately and meant many sunny afternoons scribbling away at the side of a road or on the hood of her car. Because the originals are only three inch square she scanned them and printed them with archival ink. Humor and geometry of form are the main design elements in these images. The lobby display for June features hand-dyed and hand-painted yarn. Nature inspired woolly delights handmade with love by Wee Chickadee Woolery.