SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The Academy of Art University is building on the success of its Annual Fine Art Auctions and focusing on photography in its First Annual Faculty & Alumni Fine Art Photography Auction on Saturday, March 7, 2009. With special thanks to Bonhams & Butterfields, AAU offers a rare opportunity to support emerging student artists while acquiring works by top photographers in the international market today. Fifty percent of all proceeds from the sale of fine art photography is tax deductible and will be directly donated to the university’s Student Scholarship Fund. The remaining fifty percent is dispersed to the artist. Many pieces from the expertly juried show are priced at below-market-value to encourage frequent bidding.

The impressive list of participating contemporary masters, including David Arnold, Alyson Belcher, Cissy Spindler, and Reid Yalom, are offering extraordinary works representative of their artistry and innovation. All participating artists are either graduates or instructors in AAU’s influential and dynamic School of Photography. Preview the 2009 Fine Art Photography Auction Catalogue online at www.academyart.edu/auction_march_2009.

The First Annual Faculty & Alumni Fine Art Photography Auction begins on Thursday, March 5th at 9:00AM with a Preview and opening of Silent Auction bidding. The Academy of Art University welcomes photography enthusiasts and collectors to the Auction Preview Party on Thursday, March 5th from 5:00 to 8:00PM. The main event, the Live Auction, takes place on Saturday, March 7th beginning with a reception at 2:00PM. The Silent Auction concludes approximately 30 minutes following the Live Auction.

The non-profit galleries of the Academy of Art University are hosting the First Annual Faculty & Alumni Fine Art Photography Auction at 79 Gallery, 79 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA 94105. Online bidding is available at www.academyart.edu/auction_march_2009. Cash, checks, Visa, and Mastercard are accepted. For more information, please call (415) 618-6115.

FEATURED FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHERS
David Arnold, a graduate of the Academy of Art University School of Photography MFA program, cleverly explores relics from the past, often concentrating on tensions with their contemporary environment. Now an instructor with AAU’s popular online program, Arnold is also the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship award for his photography book Situations. His artwork encompasses black and white, color, and experimental techniques of integrating silver-based photography with digital media.

Alyson Belcher inventively combines pinhole photography with improvisational performance, bringing to light human emotions unleashed through movement. “Often the body remembers what the mind has forgotten,” shares Belcher. Her pinhole camera lends itself to the revelatory nature of her artwork. An instructor at the AAU School of Photography for nearly a decade, Belcher’s hauntingly evocative photographs have been featured in numerous publications including Black & White Magazine and The Elements of Photography: Understanding and Creating Sophisticated Images by Angela Belt.

Cissy Spindler grew up in rural Northern California, where she was attracted to “the simple harmonies and gentle graphic qualities” found in nature. Spindler calls these instances of beauty “distillations.” Capturing the regal quality of a tree’s root structure in crisp black and white exemplifies Spindler’s approach of “distilling the essence of the subject into a simple visual statement.” Now working from the Santa Ynez Valley, Spindler has been teaching and developing curriculum for the AAU School of Photography online program for several years. “The constant exchange of photographic ideas feeds my creativity,” shares Spindler.

Reid Yalom is a San Francisco-based photographer who currently teaches landscape photography at the Academy of Art University while sharing his artistry through impressive publications. In Colonial Noir: Images from Mexico, Yalom explores visual elements of Film Noir, Surrealism, and Modernism in this cultural monograph of 72 duotones. He also contributed more than eighty black and white photographs for the highly acclaimed book The American Resting Place: 400 Years of History through our Cemeteries & Burial Grounds by Marilyn Yalom. Widely collected in the United States and abroad, Yalom’s work has been featured at the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington, DC; the Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco; the Vision Gallery in Jerusalem; and the U.S. State Department’s Embassy Division.