Brad Hamilton

Brad Hamilton

Sweet Briar College Art Galleries are pleased to host the first solo exhibition of Brad Hamilton's photography. A 1988 graduate of the University of Delaware, Brad furthered his study of photography at the Universtiy of Texas, Austin, 1995-98. At UT, he was Staff Photographer at The Daily Texan, and covered both university and city news, wrote captions and processed film. As a Teaching Assistant at the University of Texas from fall 1996, to spring semester 1997, he taught introductory photography to university students, assigned weekly projects and graded students' photographic and written work, delivered lectures and led classroom discussions.

Windows
Release the Hounds, 2003, gelatin silver print
Brad Hamilton

While in Austin, he also served as a Photographer II for the Visual Resources Collection of the University of Texas, in the Department of Art and Art History, 1998 - 2001. There he built and maintained digital image reserves and made photographs for the faculty. In a similar position from 2000 - 2001, he was Photographer II for the Vision Plan in the Department of Classics at the University of Texas where he trained student employees in Photoshop, the use of digital cameras, slide and flatbed scanners and database updates. During his tenure in Texas, Brad completed a photo-documentary of the Chesapeake Bay watermen.

After moving to Sweet Briar with his wife, art historian Tracy Hamilton, he was Digital Image Consultant for College Galleries, Sweet Briar College, Virginia (2001-2). This grant-funded position included managing our collection of digital images and preparing those images for the College Galleries web site and database. 2001 - 2002. Since moving to Virginia, Brad Hamilton has also accepted Freelance photography assignments. He is currently working on a photography series for his high school, St. Andrews School in Delaware. Brad and Tracy Hamilton are the parents of Niall (2) and Avi (4 months).

Artist's Statement

Photographs have been accused of doing many things: elevating the banal, documenting the present, illustrating, and lying, but above all they capture a moment and reduce it to infinity on a piece of paper. These photos here will always be the moment of everything in the lens happening at once; a fraction of a second with the potential to last forever. At the same time the image will not transcend itself. It is "somehow stupid" until we see it, and perhaps it remains so even while we view it. Maybe the unrecognizable part of something we know will sting us and we will see something new in what we thought was already known. For me this paradox of the photographic image is inescapable and it is what I find so redeeming about making photographs.