Still There

- Shooting Stills, Shooting Blanks

A contemporary Photography Exhibition

by Randy Eriksen & Gonzalo Ponce

Still There _Shooting Stills, Shooting Blanks

A Contemporary Photography Exhibition by Randy Eriksen & Gonzalo Ponce

August 1 - October 31, 2025

Vernissage/Opening: Friday, August at 7 pm

Open every Friday: 13H-17H or any day by appointment

Artist Statements

Randy Eriksen

This series of images is a visual metaphor for forgetfulness and memory loss that often come with aging. Our minds are impressed with experiences which become memories, much like walls are painted, papered, and etched.
Over time, these memories can weather, age, and fade, or be pasted over with new impressions, defaced by dementia, smeared with senility. What once was in focus, clear, and whole, are now remnants, shadows, rough daubs, and careless encrustations of cryptic recollection.

I use my camera to document these losses, these baffling transformations. Just as an old mind has been affected by many people and many places, so too have the images I photograph been altered by time, nature, and the human hand. As with memory, the simple beauty of purity has been supplanted by the entangled aesthetics of entropy.

Bio:
Randy Eriksen (b. 1954) has been a practicing amateur photographer since the early 1970s. In addition to creating art and photography, Eriksen recently retired after over 35 years as a property master in the film and television industry. He emigrated with his wife, Dorothy Bulac-Eriksen, to Portugal in 2022. His photographs have been exhibited in galleries, cafés, and bookshops throughout Seattle and Southern California. His artwork includes straight photography, photo-sculpture, and both digital and analog photo-collage. He currently lives and works in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal.

Gonzalo Ponce

My photographic work is composed of shapes, spaces, and people that stand apart from everyday life. These images capture corners and abstractions—spaces inhabited by color and form that seem to call out, even if they might otherwise have been forgotten.
Colors inside a prison, a drag queen from Valparaíso, Chile, a flower breaking through concrete… the quiet loneliness of objects that appear inert yet feel strangely alive —these are the elements of this exhibition.

In these photographs, people and places seem to lean on one another, each helping the other remain visible—to be remembered, to exist. The images are bound together by a palette of red, green, and blue tones, offering a sense of chromatic unity. I came to understand this only gradually, through years of practice.
Still There is a tribute to overlooked corners —and to the people who persist in them— remaining present, resisting disappearance.

Bio:
Born in Santiago, Chile.
Gonzalo Ponce (b. 1986) studied advertising photography but later developed a deep interest in documentary photography.
Ponce worked for over ten years as a news correspondent for various Chilean media outlets and was also on staff at the Italian news agency NurPhoto. This experience allowed him to develop alternative bodies of work separate from his formal assignments.
His photography has been shown in both group and solo exhibitions, including the International Photography Festival of Valparaíso (FIFV) and at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chile. He currently lives and works in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal