Photo by Ian F.G. Dunn

For the past 3+ years, Goodnight Raleigh and our readers have been fortunate to have Ian F.G. Dunn as a contributing photographer and historian. Opening this Friday and lasting throughout the month of August, his work will be on display at Flanders Gallery for the exhibit Terrains of Absence.

His photographs go beyond the normal bounds of architecture or documentary photography; they provoke thought on the subjects of time, durability, life, and emptiness. Ten of the images on display are in a series:

This series of images is pretty much what I love to shoot. I’ve always been a little annoyed with how cheap products have become and by the number of one-use products out there. Everything is made to be thrown away when they become old or defective. One day I was driving near Saxapahaw and started to notice a lot of mobile homes that just looked cast aside and forgotten. As if someone had just thrown them away. So I started to photograph these “disposable homes.”

–Ian F.G. Dunn

In addition to this series, there will be four large handmade prints that are a more general representation of his work.

The exhibit will also feature works by Jerome De Perlinghi and Mark Iwinski.

Architectural fragments, graffiti on crumbling buildings, abandoned houses, parking lots, tree stumps, and old photographs reveal terrains of absence in our day-to-day cultural and natural environment. This exhibit explores the desire to investigate and document these small traces of life, or histories and stories that speak to us from the past, as they are found in urban, natural, and cultural settings and endeavor to make them visible.

Ian’s photographs, in particular the architectural ones, are among the best I’ve seen anywhere. I highly recommend seeing his exhibit at Flanders Gallery, it opens this First Friday.