Jonathan Bailey Seeing Bangor

Jonathan Bailey Seeing Bangor

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Jonathan Bailey: Seeing Bangor is the first in a series of photographic commissions commemorating the University’s partnership with the City of Bangor and the museum’s move to Norumbega Hall.  The project was undertaken over the past five months.

Bailey’s haunting, distinctive images, familiar yet obscure, offer dreamy, nostalgic glimpses into what appears to be the past but most certainly is the present.  Through the use of a $2 Diana camera, Jonathan Bailey records images that are reminiscent of the earliest photographs.   As a result, Bailey’s photographs of Bangor are captivating and not easily categorized.  Refusing to be tied down to conventional ideas of what is or what is not attractive, he succeeds in reaching a form that resembles Impressionism and in so doing, achieves a delicate, natural beauty that comments about the richness of the medium as well as its limitations.

Jonathan Bailey (b. 1954) currently resides in Tenant’s Harbor Maine.  Born and raised in Vermont, Bailey moved to Maine in 1977.  His work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museum of Art in 1998 and is included in the UMMA’s permanent collection as well as the permanent collections of Bates College Museum of Art; Bibliotheque Nationale Paris; Brooklyn Museum of Art; Center for Creative Photography; Denver Art Museum; and New Orleans Museum of Art.