© Claudio Nolasco

Exhibit opening & talk

Moderated by Kai McBride, co-host ThePhotoShow podcast

Tuesday August 22nd, 2017, 7:00 PM

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Albuquerque, NM is an odd, beautiful and unpredictable organism. Everything is sharply rendered and harshly lit, making you hyper-aware of its tumultuous facets - facets shaped by history, the clashing of Indian, Spanish/Mexican, and American cultures and values, its precarious economic situation, and the almost alien landscape.

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That roughness is part of what led me to call the series Surplus City. The title comes from a sign in one of the pictures (“Surplus City” is a ubiquitous name for a discount store), but this phrase seemed a perfect description of Albuquerque – it can sometimes seem like it’s extra, unwanted, un-needed, cheap, discarded, it almost shouldn’t be there just based on the climate; but alongside it also suggests an opportunity here, value, a chance for something more.

~ Claudio Nolasco

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​​CLAUDIO NOLASCO is a Dominican-born photographer, currently residing in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he is an assistant professor of photography at Hampshire College. Nolasco holds a Master’s of Fine Arts from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s of Fine Art from The Cooper Union School of Art. He has exhibited at such galleries as Art in General, Torrance Shipman Gallery, and the Lipany Gallery at Fordham University in New York City, the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center in Philadelphia, PA, and the Miami Dade College Art Gallery in Miami, FL.