BY SABINA DANA PLASSE
George Gund will present his photography exhibition, “Persistent Nature of Nature,” at Silvercreek Art gallery Saturday, March 7, from 3-5 p.m. at 331 Leadville Ave. and Sun Valley Rd. in Ketchum with appetizers by Rickshaw.
In celebration, for the 2015 Sun Valley Film Festival, Gund will donate 50 percent of his sales for the entire month of March to the Sun Valley Film Festival.
Over the last eighteen years, Gund has gathered knowledge and experience in the technical and artistic properties of capturing images with light. Despite being born into the urban chaos of San Francisco in the 1970s, he was greatly influenced by the natural grandeur of eastern Nevada and central Idaho where he and his family lived for much of his adolescence.
“Growing up in Sun Valley inspired my interest and deep appreciation for nature,” Gund said. It wasn’t until I left Sun Valley to experience the world as an adult that I first began to notice and document the evidence of man's urge to maintain his conquests over the natural world.”
Gund’s latest installment of digital photographs in the “Persistent Nature of Nature” series presents images of tree root systems and limbs actively destroying the man-made world juxtaposing scenes of more delicate plants and flowers living a peaceful existence within our urban environments.
“Instead of resistance, I see persistence; persistence for plants to do what is genetically inherent,” Gund said. “I’m excited by the quiet yet tenuous relationship between the two elements and feel compelled to share my findings through my work.”
Images, in this particular collection, were captured in São Paulo and Itatiba. Brazil; San Francisco, Calif.; New York, New York and Prague, Czechoslovia, from 2009-2014. All images were printed in San Francisco at Gund Photography Studios and gallery at the Film Centre in San Francisco where he continues his work in fine art photography. When Gund isn’t busy shooting, he hosts exhibitions of his own work as well as that of other artists in his gallery space.