This annual summer group exhibition is the only open call we hold each year and is dedicated to featuring a wide range of photographic artworks and fine art photography and artists’ books from 40-50 fine art photographers. UnBound! generates opportunities and exposure beyond the traditional group or juried show by providing a collection opportunity for artists.

Candela Gallery is pleased to open 2019 with #InHonor, a solo exhibition by Ervin A. Johnson. Spurred by personal experiences as a queer Black man and the killing of Black people across America, #InHonor is a series of photographic mixed media portraits that stand as a visceral response to racism and police brutality done to the Black body.

Candela Gallery is pleased to announce its second collaboration with One Day Projects founder and creators, Eliot Dudik & Jared Ragland. One Day Projects promotes creative dialogue by challenging artists to collaboratively produce and publish innovative projects within a 24-hour time period. And light followed the flight of sound is their third collaborative artist book inspired by both the natural wonder and symbolic possibilities of the 2017 solar eclipse. The book features photographs by 52 artists and is presented as a 30-foot-long, hand-bound accordion with an enclosed saddle-stitched zine and essay.

Candela Gallery is pleased to present ATOM | PLANET, a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based artist, Anne Arden McDonald. Within this series McDonald creates photographic works imbued with celestial and atomic aesthetics. Approaching her darkroom process like a sort of alchemy, McDonald captures a dialogue nebulously drifting between mediums by testing materials and techniques through experimentation, noting variables, and observing the results, and amending processes.

Candela Gallery is pleased to present CHANNELS, a group exhibition featuring photographs and mixed media works by Courtney Johnson, Lisa Kokin, and Willie Anne Wright. The exhibition features three artists whose work evokes a transformative experience; each imbued with elements of salt, filament, or flora to create new forms.

CHANNELS opens September 7th with an artist reception on September 6th, from 5-8pm and runs through October 20th.

Candela Gallery is excited to announce UnBound7!, Candela’s annual juried & invitational exhibition. UnBound! features a wide array of photographic techniques from both emerging and established artists, both locally and abroad. We are very proud to bring you a compelling selection of photographic work for the seventh year in a row!

A huge THANK YOU goes out to all who have submitted work to our UnBound7! exhibition. Again this year, we had a ton of great submissions to consider and we appreciate the opportunity to bring such an ambitious show to our audience here in Richmond.

In his first solo exhibition at Candela Gallery, Harrison Walker presents his Portals project, highlighting a mix of photographic processes through a series of abstract works. In Walker’s words, the series is “an investigation of photographic chemistry, psychological perceptions, and ideas of duplication, mimicry, and the multiple.” Through experimentation and discovery the varied effects of his photographic, printmaking, and drawing techniques, seek to elicit not only an emotional but also a fundamentally experiential viewing.

Chris McCaw returns to Candela Gallery in his second solo exhibition featuring work from his recent projects, as well as new work from his Sunburn series. Over the last decade, Chris has continued to push the boundaries of the photographic medium, sharing his unconventional techniques for capturing the movement and the power of the sun as it travels through his viewfinder. With hand-built cameras and vintage photographic paper, McCaw creates unique pieces documenting the sun’s movement through illusory land and seascapes. Long exposures throughout a day, or over multiple days, materialize as marks and burns made directly by the sun’s light as it exposes the paper. As McCaw writes, through this collaborative process, “the sun has become an active participant in part of the printmaking.”

Good Thursday, All!

I want to take a moment to write a thank you and issue an update from the director’s chair. I used to write all of these Candela newsletters with an irreverent air, tucking in a photo koan or limerick but as with so many things, our operation has matured somewhat over the last 7+ years. And so have I, maybe? …pausing for the wave of existential nausea to pass… but we have been dancing pretty hard, trying to pull you onto the dance floor with us. And so, our general goal is to put out the most effective PR and messaging we can for the artists and institutions with whom we are partnering.

Candela Books + Gallery announces our seventh annual invitational and juried exhibition: UnBound7! The summer group exhibition will feature work from a wide range of fine art photographers. An UnBound7! gala event, will raise funds to purchase select works from the exhibition. Works purchased by Candela through this event will subsequently be included in the Candela Collection.

Candela Gallery is pleased to announce our first solo show with Virginia-based photographer, Morgan Ashcom. The exhibition coincides with the release of Ashcom’s recent book, What the Living Carry, published by MACK Books.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” ― William Faulkner

More than 4 months without electricity, without water — a crisis caused by a natural disaster, but made possible by over a century of U.S. colonialism. For about a million Puerto Ricans, this is still their daily reality. Without a vote in Congress, and with increasingly restrictive laws and regulation, the island has had little power in helping itself, becoming more dependent every day on outside help.

Day 155, 156, 157 is an educational experience, working to put the current crisis into perspective. The weekend programming will be composed of an exhibition of photographic and sculptural work, depicting the tragedy and the prevalent need in Puerto Rico. Proceeds from the exhibition will go toward helping small Puerto Rican farmers re-establish their farms and rebuild their communities.

Candela Gallery is excited to present the first show of the new year: Science as Muse, an exhibition featuring photographic works from Walter Chappell, Caleb Charland, Rose-Lynn Fisher, Pam Fox, Daniel Kariko, Michael Rauner, Robert Shults, and Susan Worsham.

The eight artists in Science as Muse share a particular interest in science, though their artistic interpretations vary dramatically. Included in this exhibition are artists who have been caught up in the documentation of the incredible worlds within which scientists practice their craft. Other artists use sophisticated equipment made possible only by modern scientific innovation. Some approach their creation through the foundational scientific process, asking questions and applying scientific method, producing unexpected results. Finally, there are those artists who have recontextualized science and its paraphernalia, imbuing or even circumventing the essence of time-tested practical applications with aesthetic pursuits.

Against a backdrop of ecological decline, this memoir/travelogue follows Dr. Falke (the narrator), Count Orlofsky, and Madame Lulu, three members of an itinerant theatrical troupe known as the Truppe Fledermaus, as they stage absurdist performances in various locations including Europe, England, America, and Japan. In these performances, often staged in nature with no audience, the Truppe are as apt to commemorate the passing of an unusual cloud as they are to be found documenting their own attempts to flee the rising waters of a warming planet, or using black humor to comment upon the extinction of bats or other animals.

As the General Election approaches, Candela Books + Gallery introduces STUMP; a group exhibition featuring photographic artists whose work is politically salient, couched in national issues, or generally steeped in concerns we are all facing.

With STUMP, our hope is to sponsor discussion around an array of issues at the forefront of national debates. The photographic works featured draw on our current culture and provide a lens through which to examine issues both locally and globally important.

Alyssa Salomon’s newest series, “Animal Land” explores the nocturnal landscape and the feral beauty hidden within heavily developed places along the East Coast corridor. Over the course of the last year Salomon has served as an Artist-in-Residence at Virginia Commonwealth University Rice Rivers Center, collaborating with biologist Anne Wright, Rice’s Director of Environmental Outreach, to highlight the mysticism of the ecosystems within the Central Virginia section of the James River Watershed.