Michael H. Hodges Detroit News Fine Arts Writer Published 11:09 PM EST Nov 9, 2018 Two Midtown photo exhibitions right across the street from one another beckon invitingly on this first wintry weekend. The annual photography show at Detroit’s Scarab Club and “Lost & Found,” with work by ordinary citizens at the Detroit Institute of Arts, illustrate the medium’s range — from artistic finesse to the punch and power of spontaneous snapshots. Scarab’s “2018 Photography Competition” will be up through Nov. 17. “Lost & Found” will close March 3. Taking the former first, this exhibition in the venerable art club’s airy first-floor gallery makes for a highly enjoyable walk-through, with images that include urban landscapes, photographic abstracts, and portraiture. “I’m a little less interested in straightforward photography,” said Wayne State photography Prof. Millee Tibbs, who juried the show, “and more interested in images that ask questions, are a little more poetic, or deal with the materiality in an interesting way.” That’s certainly the case with John Dykstra’s intriguing black-and-white “Penalty Box,” in which a crouching man is drawing the white outlines of a cube that appears to box him in. By contrast, the first-place winner, “Tae” by Kate Gowman, reads like a no-nonsense color portrait, but one in which Tibbs saw unexpected force. ” ‘I felt the subject was really giving it back to the photographer in a powerful way,” she said, “and that the portrait’s large scale made it a really compelling image.” Elegant and a little haunting is “The Pear” by Darrell Ellis, who used to… [Read full story]
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