Gary Grenell

Five Blocks to Green Lake

September 1 - October 2, 2011

Green Lake is a neighborhood in Seattle, home artist Gary Grenell and Green Lake Park--the most widely used urban public park in the Pacific Northwest. Since 1993, Grenell has spent innumerable hours wandering the sidewalks and park paths with camera in hand, documenting some of the people he encounters along the way. He creates unplanned black-and-white portraits of individuals right where he meets them: under trees, on sidewalks, and in front of their homes.

With "Five Blocks to Green Lake," Grenell isn't attempting a comprehensive portfolio of the area. "There is scant evidence of the crowds that are often just outside of the range of my camera lens. In fact, I position my subjects in a way that momentarily sequesters them from much of the visual cacophony. Rather, this project reflects my personal vision of this very public place, and, hopefully, the project reveals something about the depth of character of the people who frequent it, a depth that has sustained me in numerous ways over many years."

Gary Grenell was born in 1954 in Brooklyn, New York. Grenell began studying photography formally in the early 1970s, and later completed a PhD in clinical psychology. His work has been exhibited at venues in Los Angeles, Santa Fe, and extensively in Seattle, and is held in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle, and the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado.