Click on This Bedford Photography Exhibit

If you click it, they will come. That may become the new mantra in photographic art, judging by the crowd at Thursday night’s opening of "SNAP: A National Juried Exhibition of Photography" at Walnut Creek’s Bedford Gallery in the Lesher Center for the Arts.

From now through Feb. 19, 2012, work by 45 photographers, many of them young and previously undiscovered, offers unique perspectives on three themes: places, people, and abstract things or ideas.

Curator Carrie Lederer was the ultimate party host as guests poured into the gallery, helping themselves to an immediate glass of wine and ping-ponging between tables laden with hors d’oeuvres before stepping back to view the art.

“This is such a fine opportunity to see the work of young, new voices in photography,” she said.

For the artists, many of whom attended the party, opportunity was embodied in Sandra S. Phillips, one of the show’s jurors and the Senior Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

“She’s incredibly important as a juror in the West,” said Sandra Elkind, whose stop-action, short focal length images of trains and make-believe flowering tree developed from her interest in fleeting memories. “I wanted to get my work in front of someone who speaks to galleries as they’re choosing new artists.”

Kent Hasel, a Walnut Creek-based photographer who found cows and hills a fascinating juxtaposition while hiking on ridge trails in the East Bay’s regional parks, also mentioned Phillips as the main draw in entering the show.

“The subject matter interested me, but getting her stamp of approval was the biggest attraction,” he admitted.

The compliments were returned in Phillips’ juror statement, which read, in part, “I am so happy to see that the Bay Area continues to be a rich field for photography .… Clearly there are many good working photographers here.”

The show has something for everyone who appreciates photographic art. Much of the work demonstrates the evolution, or revolution (one might say), the genre is undergoing. It is less about the camera — increasingly used only as a tool for gathering raw material — than it is about the concepts and the symbolic imagery chosen to express who and what we are.

From Henrik Kam’s striking Below the Pier, revealing the effect of time and nature on defunct waterfront sites in San Francisco to Katherine Westerhout’s crumbling, sun-sharded Eastern State Penitentiary II, artists of today embrace abandoned and forlorn architecture as if to say, Don’t forget me: don’t forget my beauty amidst my inevitable decay.

Instant destruction also captivated several photographers.

“I was interested in how nature effortlessly reshaped the town in just a few minutes,” Michael Linton Simpson said about his Joplin, Mo., tornado-aftermath shots.

Taking pictures of the destruction was eerie. Despite his initial hesitation to zoom in on the tragic loss, he said creating a visual history was important.

Visitors to the gallery said they came seeking to learn, or to find artists forging unique paths into photography’s future.

John and Anna Lodato discovered many points of entry into a layered, horizontal, kaleidoscope-like print by Lisa Levine and Peter Tonningsen. Strolling to Tower is both a collaboration between two artists and an image indicative of the current movement in the field.

“It’s the people’s art and we’re on the cusp of tremendous change,” Lodato predicted.

Perhaps his excitement struck a chord throughout the gallery, because the crowd stayed, engaging in animated debates over the impressive black and white Brett Weston collection in the Alcove Gallery, or circling repeatedly in front of Ethan Worden’s scale-shifting Billboard, which managed to capture both enormity and miniature in one image.

For hours and information about the exhibit, visit www.bedfordgallery.org