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Steve Perille: Unfiltered Opening Reception: Thursday, Sept. 16 |
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Statement from Guest Curator, Byron Baldwin
Steve Perille’s photographs are deceptively simple. They are of real people doing real things, and of real places that are seemingly unremarkable. Through his photographs we are drawn to the beauty of ordinary moments. We walk right by what he chooses to photograph; we filter out the ordinary and pay no attention. His vision of the world is unfiltered; he sees the ordinary as special. His images of children are statements about childhood that anyone can understand. His images of men at work remind us of an uncle or someone we once worked for. The young lover images are universally understood. His timing of gestures and expressions captures fleeting, revealing moments. Light form and content come together to form these timeless images. Life itself is what he sees with seemingly little effort.
Steve has been a prolific photographer. The work in this exhibit covers about three years
of his life in photography and was edited down from over four thousand images. The ever-present Leica that hung around his neck was in constant use. He was an award winning photojournalist. While working for The Charlotte Observer, he was the 1975 Southern Photographer of the Year, but his images are more about the social landscape than hard news. There are strains of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Robert Frank, Eugene Atget and Henri Cartier-Bresson running through his images.
Steve is also unfiltered socially, tending to say or do whatever comes naturally. This out there personality can at times be very entertaining, at times socially awkward, and occasionally even dangerous. Whatever it is, it is never dull or predictable. This free spirit and the willingness to engage life head on, unfiltered, and his ability to find intriguing images in the commonplace has produced a remarkable body of work.
Byron Baldwin 2010
About Steve Perille
Steve Perille, a native of Wisconsin, was introduced to photography as a young boy by his uncle, Jim Mescal, who was a photographer for The Chicago Sun-Times.
PHOTO BY STEVE WYATTPerille attended the Milwaukee Institute of Technology and later was a staff photographer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He became a staff photographer for The Charlotte Observer in 1972. One short year later, Perille and two other photographers were featured in the first exhibition at The Light Factory in its first home, a second floor gallery of an old house on Torrence Street.
Perille went on to receive the prestigious Southern Photographer of the Year award in 1975. Perille left the Observer to pursue other interests in 1983, but still lives in the Charlotte area.
Click HERE to see what people are saying about the exhibit
Click HERE to see more photographs by Steve Perille
