Conveyor Arts is super excited to present The Northeast Kingdom: Photographs by Andrew Frost, on view at United Photo Industries, located at 111 Front Street in Dumbo, Brooklyn, from April 28th until May 20, 2012. An opening reception will be held on Saturday April 28th from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. The show will also be open to the public during the monthly First Thursdays Dumbo Gallery Walk on May 3rd from 6:00 - 9:00pm.

For the past two years, Frost has been making large-format photographs in and around the small town of Groton, Vermont, the town where his relations have lived for more than two hundred years. His father left to join the Navy in the 1970s, and, growing up in a military family, Frost moved quite frequently and never established a place he considered home. Partly because of this nomadic upbringing, The Northeast Kingdom, the northernmost counties in Vermont, held a mythical sense of history for Frost, having been romanced by the stories of his father’s youth. “I always imagined that it would be this beautiful place, where kids ride their bikes to the town store and everyone knows each other, like something out of a Hardy Boys book.” 

Two years ago, after moving to upstate New York, he finally made it to Vermont. It was the first time he had felt a deep connection, a sense of real belonging, to a place. Since then, Frost has travelled back frequently, 8 x 10 view camera in tow, looking for his roots. Making photographs with a view camera is slow and gradual, much like farming or writing, the process seems to compliment the way of life in small-town Vermont.  

For his first solo exhibition, Frost will present eleven large-scale black and white photographs from his travels to Vermont over the last two years. They focus on the collision of myth, place, and the notion of perceived reality. The photographs speak to the balancing act we undertake as we distinguish between what we imagine elements of our history to be and what they really are. Through precisely considered shifts in tonality, light, and composition, Frost transcends the banal moments of everyday life in this small town and turns them into subtle and poignant vignettes, reflecting a place he had built in his mind over decades. The photographs earnestly explore the beauty of rural life, while simultaneously questioning its viability.

Andrew Frost was selected as the recipient of the Conveyor Photo Grant by a panel of jurors which included John Stanley, Director of the Camera Club of New York; photographer Mette Juul; and previous grant recipient Jeremy Haik. This is the second exhibition organized as part of the annual Photo Grant, which awards one photographer a solo show printed and curated by Conveyor Arts

We also couldn’t be more exicted to collaborate with United Photo Industries, a Brooklyn-born, art-presenting cooperative dedicated to identifying, harnessing, and occasionally conjuring unexpected exhibition opportunities. For more information visit: {www.unitedphotoindustries.com}