WENDY COOPER GALLERY is pleased to present the black-and-white photographs of Michael Ackerman and Gregory Conniff in the main gallery. Masters of their craft, both Ackerman and Conniff seek to document the relationship between time, consciousness, and the human experience.

A Madison resident, Gregory Conniff, travels the country in search of the forgotten destinations often shunned by tourists. The artist's modernist landscapes include the lushly foliaged backyards of his hometown, quiet Southern sloughs, and Northern plains, and deserted industrial sites. After receiving his degree at the University of Virginia School of Law, Conniff apprenticed with William Weege at the Jones Road Print Shop in Barneveld, Wisconsin. During his almost 30-year career as a photographer, Conniff s work has been viewed nationvade - including exhibitions in Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and at the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.

Similarly, Michael Ackerman also seeks to document the relationship between consciousness and human existence. However, Ackerman's journeys take us to the urban night life scenes found in places such as Paris, New York and Poland. Born in Israel, Ackerman now lives and works in New York City. An internationally celebrated artist, his work has been exhibited in New York, Berlin, and Paris. Ackerman was awarded the International Center of Photography's Infinity Award for Young Photographers in 1997.

Benares, India - to a city rife with transience, poverty, and, intense religious ritual. A crossroads of sorts between this world and the next, thousands flock to Benares to cremate and disperse their dead. Ackerman's perspective is that of an outsider, yet one emotionally immersed in the chaotic urban landscape. His powerfully moving images present to us momentary glimpses of individual existences: a face peers out from a funeral pyre; a deceased pet monkey is lovingly adomed with incense and floral garlands; a cadaver floats down the Ganges as a young child looks on. Each image is a meditation on the transient nature of life, and the inevitability of death. Ackerman documents these moments that might have otherwise been lost in the labyrinth of ornate architecture and narrow alleys, in the sea of noise and movement that is Benares.

This exhibit is presented in conjunction with the Center for Photography at Madison's Photofest 2000.

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