UT instructor’s photography featured at Center for the Visual Arts

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Dead owls, sea lion carcasses and car wrecks are all subjects of a UT faculty member’s photography on display on the University’s Toledo Museum of Art Campus this summer.

“I know that when I show pictures of a dead owl on the ground, people are going to be interested for a lot of reasons,” said Eric Zeigler, UT photography and new media instructor. “And I hope that they come around to the reasons that I’m interested in showing them by showing them this material.”

Zeigler created the exhibition titled “Still Photography,” which can be seen through Sunday, Sept. 21, in the UT Center for the Visual Arts Clement Gallery. The free, public exhibit will be open daily from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The collection is a variety of pictures that have been taken over the past six years while Zeigler was pursuing other projects. “Still Photography” is less serious and more sataric than other collections as well, Zeigler said. They are set up in a diptych style — two pictures displayed side by side — and provide a formal connection, despite being seemingly unrelated, he said.

“Still photographs, to me, mean photographs not only of stuff that’s not moving, but photographs made for a person to sort of comprehend through a window onto the world,” he said. “Nothing’s constructed about them; they’re completely found, and the seeing itself is much of the meaning.”

Zeigler said because of the copious number of photographs he takes, he makes time to go through his work regularly, which led to the creation of this collection.

Of his three published portfolios of work, Zeigler said this one is his favorite because he feels it represents his personality best as an artist.

“I think the purpose of looking at a photograph, or any artwork at all, is to either educate yourself about the world or to open yourself up to the way that someone understands things,” he said. “It’s really about teaching yourself about things that are interesting either to you or to other people. This sort of strange menagerie of things is what’s interesting to me.”

Zeigler will present an artist talk Wednesday, Sept. 10, at 1:30 p.m. in the Center for the Visual Arts Haigh Auditorium.

For more information, visit ericzeigler.com.