Benson Campus Galleries | Greenville Technical College

Passages is an exhibition of contrasts. Blake Praytor's elegant black and white photographs carefully composed and skillfully realized in the darkroom, contrasted with Andy Warhol's black and white snapshots and Polaroids of friends and food and parties. Both made these particular photographs in the late 70's and early 80's but in different environments for different reasons and from different world views.

Blake Praytor created the images in Passages between 1977 and 1979. Praytor has recently remastered the silver gelatin prints digitally and reinterpreted them as a narrative sequence of diptychs. Blake comments: "I recognize them as more than just snapshots from my journey; they are a framework for optimism, a demonstration of how even the most chaotic moments can converge to create a larger, richer, more meaningful human experience." Praytor's photographs were created as personal, spontaneous responses to a particular time of personal joy and loss. Once his image is completed, Praytor steps aside inviting us to consider and interpret our own memories. Blake served as Chairman of the Department of Visual Arts here at Greenville Tech for nine years and as Lead Professor of Photography until his retirement in 2012. The Passages exhibit catalog is available by contacting Blake directly at bpraytor@me.com. His photographs can be found locally at Mary Praytor Gallery, marypraytorgallery.com.

USC Upstate's Andy Warhol Collection has generously loaned Greenville Tech the Polaroid and black and white photographs included in the exhibition. Warhol's staged Polaroid portraits were sketches for, and an integral step in the construction of, his commissioned silkscreened society portraits. These commissions, similar in process to his silkscreened portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy for example, financed his lifestyle. Cameras were always with Warhol as he documented his life, making hundreds, even thousands of sometimes banal images. Warhol never intended these photos to be completed works of art. According to Jane Nodine, USC Upstate Gallery Director, "The significance of these images lies in the body, or collection, of photographs and in the viewer's chance to see into the mind of the artist: a glimpse, be it ever so slight, into the creative process of Andrew Warhola, better known as Andy Warhol."