Destino opening 4/15 at The Gallery At Vivid Solutions

DESTINO

Michelle Frankfurter

Opening Reception: Friday, April 15th from 6-8pm

2208 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave SE, Washington DC 20020

Destino, a collection of photographs taken in Mexico along the migrant trail by Michelle Frankfurter, opens at The Gallery at Vivid Solutions on April 15th at 6pm. Over two decades of research and field work have gone into the creation of this collection. Destino is a timely and important investigation into the real world existence of migrating populations. Since the late 1980’s, Frankfurter has lived and worked in the Central American countries of Guatemala and Nicaragua. Over twenty years of direct experiences of the social impact of immigration policies, civil wars and drug violence, Frankfurter is telling a story many years in the making. Her documentation of survivors stories and the effects of US policy on developing countries started decades before the current climate of immigration as political buzzword.  Frankfurter’s images are at once deeply individual and at the same time universal.

The artist says of this project, “The pictures contained in my body of work are both specific representations of individuals and an allegorical depiction of the universal themes they embody: migration examined as an eternal human endeavor, the epic Homeric journey imbued with religious connotations.....As an immigrant, I feel a special empathy for these Central Americans: victimized both by global economic trade policies that make earning a living wage in their native countries impossible and by a broken immigration policy in the United States, they represent the quintessential underdog. I seek to portray them as individuals who, confronted by extreme circumstances, struggle to control their own destiny, much like the classic antihero protagonists of the adventure tales I grew up reading.”

Destino will be open to the public from April 15th to June 3rd 2011. Gallery hours are 12-5 Tuesday through Friday and 11-5 on Saturdays.  For more information, contact Beth Ferraro at 202-365-8392.

Images available on request.

The Gallery at Vivid Solutions is a photography & digital arts exhibition space dedicated to showcasing and supporting established contemporary artists, as well as aspiring local Washington, D.C. talents. The gallery aims to provide better access and knowledge about the skill of both traditional and digital photography, with the ultimate purpose of promoting and encouraging all photographers. The Gallery at Vivid Solutions is a project of ARCH Development Corporation and opened in 2009.  The gallery is located at 2208 Martin Luther King Jr Ave SE, Washington DC 20020 with Vivid Solutions DC Print Lab located in the back of the space.