A Celebration of Photography on the Central Coast

Why Divergent Visions?

As we navigate an era of shifting perspectives and evolving artistic practices, this exhibition offers a survey of non-traditional photography—embracing techniques that emphasize process, materiality, and artistic intervention. Each piece challenges the notion of a photograph as a singular moment captured, instead revealing layers of experimentation, craftsmanship, and meaning.

 

For more information on PhotoCarmel go to photography.org

The Center for Photographic Art PhotoCarmel: A Celebration of Photography on the Central Coast. CPA is excited to kick off this celebration on Friday, March 28, with keynote speaker, Richard Misrach! On Saturday, March 29, CPA will have in-person portfolio reviews and a reception for the annual Members' Show.

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Curator’s Statement, Divergent Visions: Alternative Photo Practices

by Shelby Graham

 

2025 marks a time of divergent perspectives expressed in the United States and across the world. This exhibition features a survey of non-traditional, alternative photographic processes and perspectives such as camera-less techniques, photograms, cyanotypes, botanical prints, lumen prints, gum bichromate prints, pinhole photography, Van Dyke prints, transfers, and mixed processed pieces from Monterey Bay and Northern California artists offering unique work with Divergent Visions.

 

Whether the hand of the photographer is evident or not, photographs have always been constructed, coded, manipulated, altered, cropped, erased or staged to disclose multiple stories. Roland Barthes, the author of Camera Lucida, claimed, “The photograph then becomes a bizarre medium, a new form of hallucination…a mad image, chafed by reality.”

 

Alternative photographic processes refer to techniques used in photography that differ from traditional analog camera-based film and silver-based darkroom prints. Digital imaging is often used to create negatives and positives to aid in printing and transferring alternative images. Why do photographers choose alternative practices? In this exhibition, the artists do not hide their hand-made marks or manipulated perception, they display their direct contact freely with photographic, printmaking, and sculptural materials. The prints displayed here are intentionally unique and require the viewer to question process reference, subject matter, and allow room to contemplate why the artists feel the need to go beyond traditional photography. Some artists have shared that alternative processes are more accessible to expressing their ideas and allow for experimentation and surprises.  A few artists choose to abstract the images or deconstruct the photograph down to its essence by revealing the skeletal structure of the subject.

 

Today everyone is a photographer, and we all carry a small digital camera in our pockets. Throughout this exhibition, experimental processes are described along the way. By educating both artists and viewers we can expand the notion of what a photograph can disclose about contemporary society. In the words of László Moholy-Nagy, “Photography has the unique potential for extending human perception. In photography we must learn to seek, not the ‘picture, not the aesthetic tradition, but the ideal instrument of expression, the self-sufficient vehicle for education.”

 

—Shelby Graham, curator​