PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Bridgette Mayer Gallery announces its exhibition of work by acclaimed photographer Sharon Harper. Above and Below will be on view from May 1 to June 1, 2013, with an opening reception Friday, May 3, from 6:00 - 8:30 pm. The exhibition will feature new photography and a video based on her time in Norway and Vermont.

For the past twelve years Sharon Harper has been photographing the sky to capture images that remain unseen without a camera. Using different methods of photography (multiple exposures, time exposures, and gridding - to name a few) Harper has captured the moon, sun, planets and stars as only seen in fiction or one’s imagination. In the artist’s words, she believes that the “poetic and the scientific [can] co-exist simultaneously”. In this zone of synchronicity, Harper creates stunning, mystical scenes. The images themselves and the technology behind them are not always clear, which is the crux of Harper’s work. She aims to lead the viewer to “question knowledge itself, question our ways of understanding and perceiving information and for a moment let ourselves be upended and see the richness of seeing something from two or three perspectives.”

Sharon Harper received her MFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY and her BA from Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT. Harper has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and abroad, with solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; dnj gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Halsnøy Kloster, Halsnoy, Norway; Galerie Stefan Röpke, Cologne, Germany; and Rick Wester Fine Art, New York, NY among others. Harper has received countless accolades including, an Artist Residency Fellowship at the Monastery of Halsnøy, Norway, an Artist in Residency at the Banff Centre, Banff, Canada and First Prize at the International Photography Competition, The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA. Harper is an Associate Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University and most recently a collection of her work was published by Radius Books. Harper’s work is in numerous private and public collections including, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; and the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA.