Kevin Salemme: Echoes of Light

Kevin Salemme’s exhibition Echoes of Light represents the culmination of the seventeen years of photographing his travels in Italy. As part of an experiential learning course on Italian culture he taught at Merrimack College, Salemme returned with his students to Tuscany, San Gimignano and Ostia Antica year after year. The artist found himself transformed by experiencing the same cities and villages over time, and realized it was the light itself that echoed across time, as each place revealed itself to his camera in new ways with every encounter. Presented in triptych format, the images evoke a multi-dimensional sense of time space.

Salemme always felt estranged by the definition of time as a sequential flow of events, and the triptych format allows him to explore all of the facets of a moment. In the act of taking three photographs from left to right, he disrupts the concept of linear time and challenges the viewer to see the image as three separate moments as well as never being able to distinguish exactly when each image was made. The place reveals itself in form, time, and light.

Born and raised in New England, Salemme attended The Art Institute of Boston, studied art history at Merrimack College, and earned a Masters at Harvard University. He has exhibited extensively both locally and abroad. Salemme mounted solo exhibitions in Switzerland at the Galerie Focale in Nyon and the Galerie Athénée 4 in Geneva. His work is held in corporate and private collection by Fidelity Investments, State Street Bank, as well as Fonds Cantonal de Décoration, Geneva, Switzerland. This year, Salemme worked with Boston Sculptors Gallery as lead videographer and editor on a documentary film titled Boston Sculptors at 30: Documenting 3 Decades of Sculpture.